i 



its'iUiitt!iin;(liM 



ill^ 





,»uuuuuaMiii^dii^ 



liUiiti 




Class. 
Book. 



OLD-WORLD OUESTIONS 



NEW-WORLD ANSWERS 



By the Same Author.' 

AN ENGINEER'S HOLIDAY; 

Or, Notes of a Round Trip from Long. o° to o°. 

New and cheaper Edition. Large crown Svo, cloth, price y.f. 6d. 

" Mr. Pidgeon's book has a special value from the fact that he has noted 
down a very great deal more than most travellers. He appears to be one of 
those happy persons who are born with eyes, and to have acquired the use of 
them for practical purposes." — Saturday Revietv. 

"Mr. Pidgeon seems to have no prejudices and few predilections. He 
studied men and manners wherever he went, and gives his results in simple 
language, without literary ornateness. His praise of California and doubts 
about the future of Japan have specially struck us." — Academy. 

" This is the most interesting work of its comprehensive kind since ' Greater 
Britain.' " — Spectator. 

" It is agreeable, as it is unusual, to come upon a book of travel having so 
much that is fresh to say, and which combines so happily good sense and 
brightness." — Mormng Post. 



London' : Kegan Paul, Trench & Co. 



OLD-WORLD QUESTIONS 



AND 



NEW-WORLD ANSWERS 



DANIEL PIDGEON, F.G.S., Assoc. Inst. C.E. 

AUTHOR OF 

'AN engineer's holiday; or, notes of a kolnu tkip fko.m long, o" to o° 




LONDON 

KEGAN PAUL, TREN-CII & CO., i, rATEKXOSTER SQUARE 

i!5S4 




{The ri^hli of lyaudalioii and o/ye/fcdtictioit are reserved.) 



PREFACE. 



The United States of America are a great alembic, into 
which the emigrant vessels of Europe are constantly 
pouring a vast quantity of unknown, doubtful and even 
explosive m.atters ; the raw material of the American 
people that is yet to be. 

The "American," such as I v^^ould distinguish him, is 
a social alchemist, the inheritor of a philosopher's stone, 
bequeathed him by a pious, free and courageous 
ancestry, and competent, as he believes, to transmute 
national character from base to sterling metal. Demo- 
cracy is his social solvent, the common school his 
crystallizing agent and intelligent freedom the shining 
product which he seeks in his laboratoiy. His arduous 
task is to separate obstinacy from English courage, 
superstition from French thrift, indolence from Irish 
shrewdness, want of enterprise from Scandinavian in- 
dustry, shiftlessness from negro docility, and indifference 
from Chinese skill and patience. 



VI PREFACE. 

The old world watches the transmuter closely, re- 
garding his methods, perhaps, too distrustfully, and 
criticizing his results too harshly, but, nevertheless, 
profoundly convinced that the most important problem 
of the modern world is being w^orked out under its eyes 
in the evolution of the American people. 

Shall we take a glance, reader, at the alchemist's 
home and labours ? 

London, 

May, 1884. 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER PAGE 

I. Americans and Americans ... ... ... i 

II. New England — Ansonia ... ... n 

III. Clockland ... ... ... ... ... 27 

IV. Winsted— A Temperance Town ... 45 

V. Among the Berkshire Hills — Great Bar- 

RINGTON ... ... ... ... 60 

VI. Common Schools— A Town Meeting ... 80 

VII. Pittsfield — Dalton — An Industrial Pioneer 99 

VIII. A Shaker Village — Communism ... ... 118 

IX. North Adams — An Industrial Battle — 

Williamstown ... ... ... ... 139 

X. The Hoosac Tunnel — Deerfield — Holyoke 158 

XI. The Regicide Judges — Birds and Traps— 

The Higher Education of Women ... 183 

XII. Hartford— Silk — "A Creamery" ... ... 197 

XIII. The Willimantic Thread Company — "Be- 

nevolent " Mill-owning .... ... ... 217 

XIV. Lowell, Past and Present ... ... 235 



viii CONTENTS. 

CllAI'TER PAGK 

XV. The Factory System ... ... ... 253 

XVI. Labour, Wages, and the Tariff ... 274 

XVII. Boston ... ... ... ... ... 296 

XVIII. The Hudson River ... ... ... 315 



XIX. Lakes George and Champlain 



jj"^ 



XX. Canada, Presen'J' and Past ... ... 357 



OLD-WORLD QUESTIONS 

AND 

NEW-WORLD ANSWERS. 

CHAPTER I. 

AMERICANS AND AMERICANS. 

The average American tourist of to-day spends, usually, 
a few weeks in cosmopolitan New York, pays flying 
visits to the Falls of Niagara, the political capital, and 
the greater cities of the Union, but thinks his trip only 
beginning when, turning his back on the Atlantic slope, 
he joins the ranks of the great army of civilization 
which is always on the march to the Far West. 

His chief halts are made, probably, at Chicago, St 
Louis, the City of the Saints, the mining-camps of the 
Rocky Mountains, and the cattle-ranches of their 
western flanks ; on the peaks and passes, or by the blue 
lakes of the Sierra Nevada ; in the cities of her silver 
kings, or among the wheat-fields of Central California 
and the orchards and vineyards of the Pacific slope. 
At length, he reaches the city where the old and the 
new worlds meet, and, through the portals of the Golden 

B 



2 AMERICANS AND AMERICANS. 

Gate, sees the sun set beneath the misty western horizon. 
Then he turns, to recross, in a single flight of seven days' 
duration, three thousand miles of mountain, desert, river, 
prairie, cultivation and forest. During all that time he 
passes rude camps, remote homesteads, farming villages, 
mushroom towns and settled cities, the homes of miners, 
ranchmen, pig and grain growers, lumberers, husband- 
men and citizens. 

Finally, he steps on board ship to return, in the 
full belief that he has seen America. And, geographi- 
cally speaking, this is true ; but, be he never so observ- 
ant a man, such a trip can teach him next to nothing 
about the American people, properly so called. He has, 
indeed, become acquainted with a heterogeneous popula- 
tion of English, Irish, German, Scandinavian and Italian 
birth, to say nothing of Negroes and Chinese, whom 
we collectively call Americans, although they are only 
one people in a political sense, being as distinct from 
each other, and from Americans proper, as if they or 
their parents had never left their native homes. A time 
is coming, though this is still many generations distant, 
when these various races will become blended into one, 
and the title of " American " gather a significance not, as 
yet, existing or even conceivable. Meanwhile, it is 
scarcely trifling with the average English reader to 
inquire whom we may properly call Americans and 
where they are to be found. 

The act of Elizabeth which, three centuries ago, 



AMERICANS AND AMERICANS. 3 

opened the Bible for the first time to the English 
people was attended with unexpected and stupendous 
results. By furnishing new conceptions of life and 
man, it changed the whole temper of the nation and 
gave a new moral impulse to the people, while from 
Bonner's chained Scriptures in St. Paul's Cathedral there 
ultimately sprang not only Puritan England but Re- 
publican America. Vainly, after the disclosure of the 
Hebrew literature had wrought the Reformation, as the 
disclosure of Greek literature wrought the renascence, 
did priest and king endeavour to fetter the national 
conscience, or to demand that uniformity in religious 
belief and practice which the princes and statesmen of the 
seventeenth century considered essential to the safety 
of society. Vainly were the Puritan clergy deprived, 
fined, or imprisoned for their nonconformity ; they had 
glimpsed the great principle of religious liberty and were 
soon to be in full view of civil enfranchisement. 

" Separatist " congregations, withdrawing from public 
worship on the ground that the existence of a National 
Church was contrary to the Word of God, grew quickly 
in number from tens to thousands, and these, when the 
hand of the persecutor fell too heavily, fled over sea to 
Holland. One such body of poor Lincolnshire " Inde- 
pendents " left England in 1607, under the leadership 
of their minister, Mr. Robinson, a man eminent for 
piety and learning, and took refuge, first in Amsterdam 
and afterwards at Lcyden. To preserve the morals of 



4 AMERICANS AND AMERICANS. 

their youth, endangered, as they believed, by the " disso- 
lute manners " of their Dutch neighbours, they presently 
determined to proceed to America and settle under the 
general government of Virginia. 

This colony, " The Old Dominion," as it is sometimes 
called, had established itself on the shores of Chesapeake 
Bay some twelve years before, under a charter from 
James I. ; but its members generally were neither in- 
dustrious nor energetic. Many of them were "useless 
gentlemen," bankrupts and pardoned criminals, who, for 
the most part, employed themselves in looking every- 
where for gold instead of ploughing and sowing. Their 
leader, Captain John Smith, a man of singular ability 
and energy, had implored the company in England to 
send him out some honest artisans, " thirty of whom," 
he wrote, " burdened with a family, would be better 
than a thousand such as I have." 

The high character of the Leyden refugees being well 
known, the Virginian Company gave a warm welcome to 
their proposal ; but the king, on being petitioned, refused 
to grant them any public recognition of religious liberty, 
although he promised that they should not be molested 
on account of their opinions, so long as they lived in 
accordance with the laws of England. In the result, 
the Mayflower, a barque of a hundred and eighty tons, 
carrying about one hundred pilgrims, sailed from Delft 
in 1619 and dropped her anchor, in November of the 
same year, within the harbour of Cape Cod. It was the 



AMERICANS AND AMERICANS. 5 

intention of the pilgrims to have landed at the mouth of 
the Hudson River ; but the Dutch, intending to plant 
a colony of their own in this locality, bribed the master 
of the ship to make a more northerly landfall, and, after- 
wards, to raise difficulties in the way of sailing south- 
wards at that season of the year. Finding themselves 
thus without the limits of their patent and the juris- 
diction of the Virginia Company, the refugees formed 
themselves, before landing, into a body politic, signing 
a common agreement, whereby equal rights were 
accorded to each member of the community, and the 
principle of government by the will of the majority 
was affirmed. 

Familiar as we now are with representative institu- 
tions, it seems strange that no English tongue or 
pen had previously dared to assert this, then novel, 
doctrine. In that despotic and superstitious age, public 
opinion itself gave willing support to the monarch's 
claim to be considered the sole fountain of power and 
privilege, and popular rights were not, as yet, conceived 
of, except as grants from the Crown. But the minds of 
the Leyden pilgrims had so long been saturated with the 
ideas of primitive Christianity derived from Elizabeth's 
open Bibles and their consciences were so purified by 
the practical application of religion to the daily conduct 
of life, that, pushed by the force of the circumstances in 
which they found themselves, they easily discovered a 
truth in the science of government to which preceding 



6 AMERICANS AND AMERICANS. 

centuries had been entirely blind. " Thus, on the bleak 
shore of a barren wilderness, in the midst of desolation, 
with the blast of winter howling around them and sur- 
rounded with dangers in their most awful and appalling 
forms, the pilgrims of Leyden laid the foundation of 
American liberty." 

But what, it may be asked, have these commonplaces 
of history to do with the question, " Who are the 
Americans ? " Well, we have at least reminded our- 
selves that the settlement of New England was made 
by men who were pre-eminently English in their love of 
civil and religious freedom, and another glance into the 
past will show that, from the moment of its establish- 
ment, the English Puritans regarded Plymouth in North 
America as their true home. In the course of a few 
years, band after band of religious fugitives crossed 
the Atlantic, escaping from a persecution, less rigorous 
indeed than that which drove the Separatists from their 
native land, but urging them, equally with their prede- 
cessors, to seek religious liberty abroad. 

Thus, in the summer of 1629, there came sailing into 
what is now Salem Harbour five vessels, one of which 
was the Mayflower herself, bringing two hundred Puritan 
emigrants, and, in the next year, came Governor Win- 
throp, with eight hundred more. As the king's tyranny 
and Laud's intolerance grew, the refugees increased from 
hundreds to thousands. Nor were they adventurers, 
bankrupts and crim.inals, like the -earlier colonists of the 



AMERICANS AND AMERICANS. 7 

South ; but always respectable, often highly educated, 
and sometimes rich men. They had powerful friends in 
England, a charter from the king, securing them in the 
right to govern themselves as they pleased, so long as 
they did nothing to contravene English law, and both 
Winthrop's and succeeding expeditions came well pro- 
vided with supplies of all kinds, including cattle and 
sheep, of which the pilgrims had none. Such were the 
settlers of the Massachusetts Bay colony, the founders 
of Trimountain, afterwards called Boston, of Salem, 
Roxbury, Dorchester, Watertown, and other places now 
flourishing cities and towns. 

But, although strong and rich, the new colonists suf- 
fered almost as much in their earlier efforts to subdue 
the wilderness for the use of man as did the pilgrims 
themselves ; while, save in their kindlier feeling towards 
the mother country, the Puritans differed but little from 
the Plymouth settlers in opinions or mode of life. 
Hence, though for many years the two colonies were 
entirely separate, they presently began to gravitate to- 
gether and, before the close of the century, had become 
united under the name of the^ colony of Massachusetts, 
the " Country of Blue Hills." 

Thereafter, for more than a hundred and fifty years, 
these Englishmen of Englishmen remained without any 
accession to their numbers, except from men of their 
own race and religion. During all this time, they toiled 
unceasingly, and as one man, at the almost desperate 



8 AMERICANS AND AMERICANS. 

task of clearing, road- making and building; while, at 
the same time, they created a society and form of 
government, which, monarchy and aristocracy aside, was 
intensely English in its customs, habits and laws. No 
circumstances can be conceived of more favourable to 
the production of a powerful and distinctive type of 
national character, a character whose high qualities 
were to be displayed later in the heroic acts of the 
revolution, the establishment of the Republic, and 
the enthronement of freedom. 

Now, it is within the memory of living men that this 
people, such as I would distinguish them, have begun to 
receive any admixture of other than English blood. Fifty 
years ago, the great wave of European emigration, which, 
to-day, throws annually more than a million of souls on 
the American shore, had scarcely begun to rise. At that 
time there was hardly a name in New England which was 
not English, and its people were, perhaps, more typical 
Anglo-Saxons than those of the mother country itself 
Of intermixture between the settlers and Indians there 
was practically none, the English aversion to cross with 
aboriginal races being, in this instance, accented both 
by the prohibitions of religion and the hostility of the 
native tribes. The " Americans," indeed, as writers not 
a hundred years old rightly designated the red-skins, 
were pushed back before the advance of a new nation, 
English in its origin, language and laws, but, above all, 
English in its devotion to the Bible. 



AMERICANS AND AMERICANS. 9 

The one home of this people was, for generations, 
New England ; but they have spread, with the develop- 
ment of America, over the whole continent, being 
everywhere the leaders of enterprise and shapers of the 
forms under which civilization has manifested itself 
in every state, territory, and township of the Union. 
The heterogeneous hordes now in process of occupying 
the public domain of America are not as yet Americans. 
It is the sons of New England, the descendants of the 
Puritan emigrants, whose principles and characters have 
been formed by the social and political influences created 
by their forefathers, who alone can be called Ameri- 
cans. To them must be added the Quaker colonists 
of Pennsylvania, the form of whose institutions, whether 
religious or political, was largely determined by the 
example of their Puritan predecessors. 

The future of the American people is the greatest 
question of the modern world, and it is because this vast 
trust is in the hands of men of English blood that 
intelligent Englishmen take an interest which is quite 
unique in American travel. If the tourist in the States 
is, at first, most strongly attracted towards the strange 
life, peculiar scenery, or new sport of the West, he 
presently finds himself considering, with at least equal 
interest, the social and industrial problems of the East. 
No peak or cailon of the Sierras, indeed ; no stretch of 
sun-lit, sea-like plain ; no forest of giant pines ; no 
mountain mining-camp offers to the Englishman in 



lo A3fERICANS AND AMERICANS. 

America objects of such interest as may be found in 
New England's rocky valleys, whose swift streams turn 
a thousand mills, and whose prosperous towns, happy 
homes and bright people suggest many a grave question 
to the least thoughtful Briton. 

For the average man, with time on his hands, money 
in his pocket and the great continent of America open 
before him, a summer ramble through the manufacturing 
districts of New England is scarcely a tempting holiday 
programme. Most people, indeed, prefer to visit work- 
shops and workmen vicariously, care nothing for the 
companionship and conversation of labour and readily 
delegate to volunteers the distasteful details of inquiry 
into industrial questions. All such sensible sybarites 
I invite to accompany me on a short flight through 
the roaring valleys of Massachusetts and Connecticut, 
promising that no one shall touch pitch in the course of 
the trip, while we will linger long enough, on our home- 
ward way, whether by the brown Hudson, blue Lake 
George, or the sea-green Saint Lawrence, to wash the 
dust of the mills from the minds of over-sensitive 
readers. 



CHAPTER II. 

NEW ENGLAND — ANSONIA. 

Captain John Smith, the remarkable man who, as we 
have seen, directed the early operations of the Virginian 
Company, was, among other things, a daring navigator. 
He made expeditions, at various times, along the coast 
as far as Maine and gave the name of Plymouth to the 
spot where the Pilgrim Fathers landed many years before 
that event took place. It was he, indeed, who first 
called this part of America " New England," a title 
subsequently adopted in the patent of James, which 
created a council " for the planting, ordering, and govern- 
ing of New England." 

Of the six States now comprised under this designa- 
tion, Massachusetts was the first to be settled by the 
Puritan refugees. Maine was long a mere hunting- 
ground and remained practically a part of Massachusetts 
until after the revolution. The earliest settlers of New 
Hampshire were fishermen, who, being once rebuked by 
a travelling minister for their neglect of religion, said, 



12 NEIV ENGLAND — ANSONIA. 

" Sir, you are mistaken ; you think you are speaking to 
the people of Massachusetts Bay. Our main object in 
coming here was to catch fish." Vermont was first 
explored by Champlain, the great Frenchman who 
founded Quebec, but had no settlers till early in the 
eighteenth century, and was not recognized as a separate 
colony before the revolution. Rhode Island was founded 
by a young Baptist minister, named Roger Williams, 
who fled there in 1636 to escape persecution at the 
hands of the Puritans, who, if themselves religious 
refugees, had little toleration for any but their own forms 
of belief Connecticut was settled by the English and 
Dutch simultaneously, but the former were the first 
to reach and cultivate the rich valley of the Connecticut 
river. 

New England, although two-fifths larger than Old 
England, contains only four millions of inhabitants, or 
less than a hundred and twenty persons to the square 
mile, the population being most closely aggregated in the 
manufacturing States of Massachusetts, Rhode Island, 
and Connecticut, where the people number two hundred 
to the square mile. The western half of the country is 
occupied by several parallel ranges of mountains, the most 
easterly undulations of the Alleghany chain, which run 
almost north and south, and rise like waves of gradually 
increasing height from the Atlantic slope. The last 
stretches from the hills to the ocean, and is a region of 
plains, low hills, and well-watered valleys, thickly settled, 



NEW ENGLAND — ANSONIA. 13 

well cultivated, and the site of all the chief towns and 
cities of the Eastern States. 

The western valleys of Massachusetts and Con- 
necticut are the homes, par excellence, of American 
manufacturing industry. Carrying swift and important 
streams to the sea, they thus, in the first place, invited 
settlers to their banks, and most of these river-courses 
are now dammed at short intervals, while around the 
dams there cluster factories, mills and the homes of 
labour. These are, for the most part, hemmed in by 
high forest-covered hills, sometimes rising two or three 
thousand feet above sea-level, and are reached by 
railways which stretch from the sea-board into every 
valley boasting a mill-stream. 

The Housatonic, one of the most important of 
these industrial rivers, flows for a hundred miles 
of its course between the picturesque wooded flanks of 
the Green Mountain and Taconic ranges, before de- 
bouching into the Sound. Its tributary, the Naugatuck, 
runs almost parallel with the larger stream for the 
greater part of its course, and the banks of both rivers 
hum with the sounds of industry from one end to the 
other. 

It was a bright May morning, with the sky of Italy 
and air more invigorating than wine, when we started, 
an Anglo-American party of two, with the intention 
of visiting some of the Naugatuck and Housatonic 
factories, and of seeing how the homes of labour in 



J 4 NEW ENGLAND — ANSONIA. 

New England differ from those of Old P2ngland. 
Leaving New York, the railway skirts the coast and 
crosses a seemingly endless succession of drift beds, 
plainly of glacial origin. The drift overlies azoic 
gneisses, huge shoulders of which rise above a plain of 
arable soil, just as islands rise from a sea. Where the 
primitive rock is very thinly covered with earth, there 
occur patches of forest trees, whose roots scarcely find 
sustenance in the crevices to which they cling. Saving 
the forest, the aspect of the country is essentially 
English. Small fields are divided from one another by 
walls built of the boulders picked from the soil. Pretty 
farmhouses recur at short intervals and snug private 
houses, surrounded by well-kept gardens, herald, now and 
again, our approach to flourishing towns. 

Arrived at Stratford, where the Housatonic debouches 
into the Sound, we strike northwards and follow the 
river to its junction with the Naugatuck, through a 
country, also of rounded gneissic hills, which are deeply 
buried in level sheets of drift. Clearings and forest 
alternate for a time, but the latter presently prevails. 
Tiny brooks of clear brown water wander around the 
stems of the trees and among the mossy bosses of rock, 
while great tufts of the " skunk cabbage " {Symplocarpiis 
foetidtis) spring abundantly beside every watercourse, 
arresting attention by their brilliant green colour. 
" New England is a country of laughing brooks," said 
a travelling companion once to Mr. Secretary Evarts, 



JV£JV ENGLAND — ANSONIA. 15 

who was as great a joker as he was a good lawyer. 
" It must be so," was the answer, " or the books would 
not say so much about ' diverting watercourses.' " 

The Housatonic and Naugatuck join at Derby, 
where their united streams sweep majestically around 
high hills which are everywhere covered with forest, 
leafless and grey as yet, but relieved by occasional 
clumps of beautiful evergreen hemlocks. Entering 
the Naugatuck valley, we caught sight of the manu- 
facturing town of Birmingham, lying on the junction 
of the two streams. The name recalls ideas of 
a smoky town, with dingy suburbs, overhung by a 
murky sky, but the view from our car windows was 
of something very different from this. A number 
of massive brick buildings — one scarcely knew in the 
distance whether they were factories or castles — lined 
the beautiful curve of the river, and shone, rosy red, in 
the sunlight, through pearly morning mist. Above the 
latter, which lay low on the water, rose tier upon tier 
of gleaming white houses, the highest of them peeping 
out from the hillside forest, whilst overhead was the 
blue arch of an Italian sky. 

The Naugatuck river is a clear mountain stream of 
considerable volume, which, but for the intervention of 
man, would seek the sea in a series of rapids. It has, 
however, been so often dammed as to exhibit a succes- 
sion of beautiful mountain tarns, whence artificial canals, 
called " raceways," lead to the various mills. We made 



1 6 NEW ENGLAND — ANSONIA. 

our first halt at Ansonia, the creation and namesake of 
a Mr. Anson Piatt, who dammed the river at this spot 
about thirty years ago, and built the first of the great 
" brass-mills " for which the Naugatuck is now famous. 
These mills all originated in the following way. The 
stream, being easily controllable, while its flow of water 
is abundant, offered great advantages to the early 
makers of wooden clocks, who may be called the pioneers 
of manufacture in America. They established small 
water-wheels and modest workshops here in considerable 
numbers and, by-and-by, as metal came into use for 
clock-making, a few brass-rolling and wire-drawing mills 
arose in the valley. These, when the staple trade was dull, 
sought an outlet for their sheet and wire by making pins, 
lamp-fittings, cartridges, ferrules, arrow-heads, shoe-tips, 
corset studs, wire chain, and a thousand other trifles, 
such as can be stamped from brass sheet or twisted out 
of wire. There came a brief, bright time, indeed, when 
every mill on the Naugatuck turned its attention with 
advantage to the making of " hoop-skirts." But when 
fashion presently decreed the reign of scanty dresses, 
an industrial earthquake shook the crinoline factories 
almost to their foundations. Since then, clocks and 
pins have dominated the district and, if I say nothing 
of the former until we reach Waterbury, the capital of 
dockland, the latter may be appropriately sung at 
Ansonia. 

There were but two pinmakers in the American 



NEW ENGLAND — ANSONIA. 17 

colonies during revolutionary times, viz. Jeremiah Wil- 
kinson, a Rhode Island wire-drawer, and Samuel Slocum, 
also of Rhode Island, whose patent machine for making 
solid-headed pins was already working in England. At 
this time, imported pins sold for Js. 6d. a dozen ; so that 
we read without surprise of a State offer of " ^50 for the 
best twenty-five dozen pins of domestic make, equal to 
those imported from England." In 1831, Dr. Howe, 
of New York, invented a machine which made pins at 
one operation, and, a few years later, a pinmaking 
company was formed, which continued its operations, 
under the charge of Dr. Howe, until 1865. 

The Wallace Brass-Mill, one of the largest concerns 
in Ansonia, owes its origin to the introduction of the 
Howe pin-machine. This has already created a demand 
for brass wire, which could not be met, except by 
importation, there being little practical skill in wire- 
drawing available in America at that time, when Mr. 
Wallace, originally an English wire-drawer, was found 
working at Birmingham, Connecticut, and proved the 
man for the occasion. He was soon persuaded to 
pitch his tent at Ansonia, and began making pin- 
wire about twenty-five years ago, with scarcely twenty 
men to assist him. His mills now employ seven 
hundred hands, and, aside from wire and sheet, turn out 
enormous quantities of the useful trifles, of which some 
have already been enumerated. These, like pins, are 
all produced by extremely clever and very interesting 

C 



18 NEW ENGLAND — ANSONIA. 

automatic machinery, which it seems the special pro- 
vince of the Americans, and especially of the Connec- 
ticut mechanic, to devise. 

This remarkable character, who, more than any 
other person or circumstance, has given its distinctive 
features to American manufacture, is a figure of so much 
industrial importance that we cannot make his acquaint- 
ance one moment too soon. He is usually a Yankee 
of Yankees by birth and of a temperament thoughtful 
to dreaminess. His natural bent is strongly towards 
mechanical pursuits, and he finds his way, very early in 
life, into the workshop. Impatient of the fetters which 
trade societies forge for less independent minds, he 
delights to make his own bargain with his employer, and, 
whatever be the work on which he is engaged, bends 
the whole force of an acute but narrow intelligence to 
scheming means for accomplishing it easily. Unlike 
the English mechanic, whom a different education and 
different circumstances have taught to believe his own 
interest ill served by facilitating the operations of the work- 
shop, the Connecticut man is profoundly convinced to the 
contrary. He cherishes a fixed idea of creating a mono- 
poly in some branch of manufacture, by establishing an 
overwhelming superiority over the methods of production 
already existing in that branch. To "get up " a machine, 
or series of machines, for this purpose, is his one aim 
and ambition. If he succeeds, supported by patents 
and the ready aid which capital gives to promising 



NEW ENGLAND — ANSONIA. 19 

novelty in the States, he may revolutionize an industry, 
forcing opponents, who produce in the old way, alto- 
gether out of the market, while benefiting the consumer 
and making his own fortune at the same time. 

The workshops of Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and, 
especially, of Connecticut, are full of such men. Usually 
tall, thin, reflective, and taciturn, but clever and, above 
all things, free, the equals, although mechanics, of the 
capitalist upon whose ready alliance they can count, 
they are an element of incalculable value to American 
industry. Their method of attacking manufacturing 
problems is one which, intelligently handled, must 
command markets by simultaneously improving quali- 
ties and cheapening prices. We ourselves certainly 
aim, as they do, at the specialization of manufacture, 
but one scarcely treads upon the threshold of dockland 
before feeling how much more universally the system 
is being applied in the States than here. Tools and 
processes which we are inclined to consider as excep- 
tionally clever are the commonplaces of American 
shops, and the determination to do nothing by hand 
which can be done by a machine is a marked cha- 
racteristic of the workman there, while it scarcely exists 
among operatives here. The " Connecticut man " will 
crop up again and again in the course of our trip. 
He is an element of the utmost importance in the 
industrial development of America, a force of which 
we, unfortunately, have no equivalent in England, and 



20 A'EIV ENGLAND — ANSONIA. 

that is why I have taken the earh'est opportunity of 
introducing him to the reader. 

Returning to pins, it is really charming, if I may use 
a word usually reserved for descriptions of personal 
or natural beauty, to watch the pretty little automaton 
called a pin-machine. This little creature feeds heartily, 
but without haste, on a coil of brass wire and, imme- 
diately after taking a bite, turns one end of the pin that 
is to be, held firmly in a gripping die, towards a small 
hammer, whose blows fall too rapidly to be counted 
or even seen. The headed shanks next drop, one by one, 
into radial notches in a horizontal disc, where they look 
like pointless pins stuck, heads inward, around a flat 
pin-cushion. This pin-cushion turns slowly round, and 
presents each projecting shank successively to the rims 
of three tiny grindstones, revolving at a very high 
speed, which first form and then finely finish the points. 
Hour by hour the steel jaws snip the wire, the hammers 
beat their rapid tattoo on the heads, the rowel of wire 
shanks turns slowly over the hissing little grindstones, 
discharging a hundred and seventy finished pins per 
minute. It is like watching, through a microscope, the 
wheel-like play of a rotifer's cilia. 

Time and the reader's patience would both fail, 
did I attempt to describe all the automata of the 
Wallace Brass-Mill. Here is a row of strange organ- 
isms, in shining nickel-plate costumes, nipping away, 
like the pin-machine, at a roll of brass wire, and 



NEW ENGLAND — ANSONIA. 21 

carrying the pieces, one at a time, by means of fingers 
as shapely as those of a girl, to be headed, and then 
dropping them, finished corset studs, as fast as one can 
count, into a box. There is another group of wire- 
eaters, taking in brass and turning out chain at the 
rate of seventy links a minute, no one regarding, while 
the links grow from yards to miles. Here is a wonder- 
ful automaton which sticks two thousand pins a minute 
into pin-papers and, there, another which punches, folds, 
and glues together cardboard pin-boxes, at the rate of 
a thousand an hour. Such is the character of the sur- 
roundings among which the Connecticut man lives, 
moves, and has his being. Here he observes, alters, 
amends and schemes. These pulsating and quasi- living 
beings are his children and companions, who give him 
occupation, pleasure and stimulation. The thousand 
wants of the world offer him a boundless field for his 
creative powers, and, silently brooding, he brings forth, 
now and again, a new automaton, as a poet produces a 
verse, or a musician a melody. 

The deep, thrilling notes of many steam-whistles 
having proclaimed the factory dinner-hour, we made 
our way, in company with a stream of artisans of both 
sexes, to the " Hodgkiss House," in search of refresh- 
ment. Married operatives in America usually live in 
their own houses, while unmarried labour generally 
" rooms " in tenement houses and " boards " in estab- 
lishments, which, while practically eating-houses, are 



22 A'EIV EXGLAND — ANSONIA. 

ostensibly hotels. " Table boarders " are sometimes 
called simply " mealers," or even, when a buggy goes 
round to collect the scattered clientele of a given house, 
" hauled mealers ; " but we, on this occasion, were 
" transient mealers." 

We entered a large dining-room, very clean, well 
furnished, and simply but nicely decorated, set with 
small, separate tables, dressed in the whitest linen and 
attended by trim girls, who, if their manners were inde- 
pendent, waited smilingly and well. No printed bill of 
fare appeared, but the waitress whispered rapidly in the 
ear of each guest, " Hash and tea, pork and beans, 
potatoes, stringbeans, succotash, pie-plant pie, apple and 
cranberry pie." A little puzzled, but always anxious to 
act the Roman in Rome, I called for " Hash and tea, 
succotash, and pie-plant pie ; " and then looked around 
at the company. The room was crowded with diners 
of both sexes, whose dress, manners, and speech scarcely 
distinguished them from an average hotel crowd and, 
hampered as yet by English ideas, I had to ask more 
than once if I was really among American artisans. 
ISefore I could feel fully assured on this point, came 
my hash and tea ; I dared not ask for beer, for, likely 
enough, Ansonia might be a teetotal town, and I already 
knew that American operatives drink nothing stronger 
than ice-water, coffee, and tea. The compound of beef 
and potatoes was excellent, and " succotash " proved to 
be a stew of mixed Indian corn and beans, a dish which, 



A'EIV ENGLAND — ANSONIA. 23 

as I afterwards learned, the Pilgrim Fathers adopted 
from the natives. " Pie-plant pie " was a surprise, being 
nothing else than rhubarb tart, predestinarian Puri- 
tanism having early recognized and acknowledged by- 
name the manifest destiny of this useful vegetable. 
The midday meal was soon despatched, the orderly, 
respectable crowd strolled off to the various factories, 
and we found ourselves, after a temperate repast, fit 
for any amount more work, while the day was as yet 
hardly half-spent. 

The most interesting and newest factory in Ansonia 
is that of the Postal Telegraph Company, where Pro- 
fessor Farmer's patent compound telegraph wire is now 
being manufactured on a very large scale. It is not 
long since the American press startled the world of 
science by announcing that a telephonic conversation 
had been carried on successfully between Chicago and 
New York, cities which are more than a thousand miles 
asunder, a distance forty or fifty-fold greater than the 
length of any ordinary telephone line. 

A telegraph line may be regarded as a road, along 
which electric currents travel from a battery at one end 
of the wire to some form of mechanism which is capable 
of recording the passage of such currents at the other. 
These currents are never very powerful, and sometimes, 
as in the case of the telephone, almost infinitely feeble ; so 
that, if we figure them to our minds as wheeled carriages 
in movement, we can understand that their motion 



24 NEW ENGLAND — ANSONIA. 

will be greatly influenced by the comparative roughness 
or smoothness of the road they traverse. All the metals, 
as is well known, are " conductors " of electricity, or, in 
other words, offer little resistance to its passage through 
their substance, but they are so in very different degrees. 
Of the commercial metals, copper offers scarcely any 
resistance to the passage of electric currents, but cannot 
be advantageously used for line wires, because it bears 
little tension, stretches excessively, soon loses its elas- 
ticity, and is much affected by temperature. Iron wire, 
on the other hand, being cheap and superior to copper 
in all the points just enumerated, has come into universal 
use for telegraph wire, notwithstanding its comparatively 
high resistance to the passage of electric currents. The 
idea of plating a steel core with a copper skin and thus 
combining the strength of one metal with the conduc- 
tivity of the other, was entertained many years ago, but 
was never successfully reduced to practice. Electro- 
plating, by means of batteries, was found much too slow 
and expensive a process for covering such lengths of 
wire as were required, while there was not sufficient 
adhesion between the deposited copper and the steel 
core to permit of the compound wire being lengthened 
by the process of " wire-drawing." Professor Farmer's 
advance on what had previously been accomplished 
consists in employing the very powerful currents obtain- 
able from dynamo-electric machines, in combination 
with a simple but very ingenious plan of passing coils 



NEJV ENGLAND — ANSONTA. 25 

of wire of any length continuously through the plating 
vats. 

We enter a great one-storied building, some two 
hundred and fifty feet square, at one end of which stand 
twenty-four large dynamos, weighing together some 
sixty tons. These are driven by engines of six hundred 
horse-power, and the resulting current of electricity is 
carried through thick copper bands to the electro-plating 
tanks. If one wishes for a demonstration of the tremen- 
dous energy which courses silently through these con- 
ductors, it is sufficient to divert a very small portion of 
the current and pass it through a rod of carbon, such as 
is commonly used in the electric lamp. This is soon 
made to glow with an intense white heat, and is finally 
deflagrated in a burst of brilliant flame. When the 
factory has been once or twice illuminated by the light- 
ning-like flash of this experiment, the mind recognizes 
something akin to the silence which heralds a thunder- 
storm in the unusual quiet of this singular workshop. 

Two hundred and fifty wooden troughs, each about 
twenty feet long, constitute the battery of plating vats. 
These are arranged in rows, and contain an electrolytic 
fluid, as usual in ordinary electro-plating. Over each 
trough a longitudinal spindle turns slowly round in 
bearings, and from this, like rings on a stick, hang as 
many spires of a coil of steel wire as the tank will 
contain. Each spire is separated from its neighbour 
by a slip of glass, while that part of the steel-wire coil 



26 NEW ENGLAND — ANSONIA. 

which cannot find room in the tank depends from the 
revolving spindle which overhangs it for this purpose. 
In this way the wire is, so to speak, screwed slowly 
through the electrolytic bath, from which it issues coated 
with a copper envelope. The operation is repeated three 
times and results in the deposition of four thousand 
pounds of copper per day upon eight miles of the steel 
core, the two together forming a conductor rather less 
than a quarter of an inch in diameter, weighing seven 
hundred pounds to the mile and composed of copper 
and steel in the proportion of five to two. The largest 
wire used in telegraphy resists the passage of the current 
with five times more energy than its new rival, while it 
is nearly twice the diameter, proportionately heavier 
and of no greater tensional strength than the compound 
wire. 

Already Professor Farmer's line stretches from New 
York to Chicago and will span the United States before 
these words are printed. A thousand words have been 
transmitted a thousand miles in one minute, and ten 
messages sent over it simultaneously, five each way, for 
the same distance. Telephonic conversation has been 
carried on by its means between cities separated by 
nearly half the Continent, and the men who listened in 
Ansonia to speakers in Chicago believe that the whisper 
of a human voice will yet make itself heard from the 
Atlantic to the Pacific shore. 



CHAPTER III. 

CLOCKLAND. 

Ascending the Naugatuck valley for a few miles, we 
reached VVaterbury, a town of twenty thousand in- 
habitants and the capital of dockland, where, within a 
radius of twenty miles, more clocks are made than in 
any other part of the world. There is, indeed, a hint, in 
the scenery of Naugatuck, of that other watch country, 
Switzerland, whose industrious people till their ungrate- 
ful mountain farms in summer and make watches in 
their chalets during winter. Here is the same rough 
country and poor farming land, but the people are 
congregated in great factories, where thousands of 
clocks are made every day, by means of beautiful 
special machinery. 

Fifty years ago, a clock was an heirloom, even in well- 
to-do American families, but scarcely any home is without 
one to-day, and this change has been brought about by the 
skill and enterprise of the Connecticut man. Towards 
the close of the last century Eli Terry established him- 



28 CLOCKLAND. 

self in the town of Plymouth, Connecticut, and began 
making wooden clocks. The teeth of the wheels were 
first described by a pair of compasses and then cut 
out with a handsaw, while, aside from a few pivots 
and fastenings, there was not a piece of metal in the 
old Yankee clocks. For a good many years, Terry sold 
his clock movements for five pounds apiece and these 
were cased by the local joiner whenever the farmer or 
trader brought one home to his family and village. 
That is why the upright clocks of a hundred years 
ago have so much character about them and the true 
reason of their popularity among persons of good taste. 
In 1807, Terry commenced making wooden clocks by 
machinery and, about the same time, Riley Whiting, 
another Connecticut man, started a wooden-clock factory 
at Winsted, a few miles from Waterbury. He intro- 
duced a great many improvements in the manufacture 
and finally became the most important clockmaker of 
his day in America. 

Meanwhile, competition had already reduced the 
price of wooden movements from five pounds to twenty 
shillings, when a certain Chauncey Jerome suddenly 
revolutionized dockland, by the introduction of a clock 
made entirely of brass. The framework and wheels of 
this time-piece were punched out of sheet metal and its 
spindles turned -in automatic lathes, the effect of this 
change in the common practice being to reduce the cost 
of a clock movement to about two shillings and the 



CLOCKLAND. 29 

price of cased clocks to eight or ten shillings apiece. A 
first consignment of Connecticut clocks was sent to 
England in 1842 and, since that time, not only have 
they found their way into almost every British kitchen 
and cottage, but have been scattered by millions broad- 
cast over the whole world. 

Aaron Dennison and Edward Howard were the first 
persons who attempted to make watches by machinery. 
Their object was to improve upon the cheaper Swiss 
watches, and, competing with low-priced labour by 
means of special tools, to beat the Genevese in their own 
markets. After a series of experiments lasting over two 
years, they felt emboldened to seek the assistance of a 
Boston capitalist, Mr. Samuel Curtis, and the first watch 
factory was built at Roxbury, Massachusetts, in 1850. 
This modest establishment was only a hundred and fifty 
feet long and twenty-five feet wide, but the pioneers of 
mechanical watchmaking thought it would probably be 
sufficient for all purposes and were bold men at that, 
forty-four years ago. They began by making eight-day 
watches, but had only completed fifty of these when the 
pattern was pronounced a failure. The usual thirty-hour 
watch was next adopted, and before a thousand had been 
put on the market, it seemed desirable to increase the 
scale of the enterprise. A factory, ten times larger than 
the first, was accordingly built at Waltham, Mass., in 
1854, where a newly organized corporation, called the 
Boston Watch Company, began work on a greatly 
extended basis. 



30 CLOCKLAND. 

But the heavy outlay on experiments, machinery 
and the instruction of help was too much for the re- 
sources of the new concern and, three years after the 
Waltham works were opened, the company went into 
liquidation. Mr. Howard, under whose management 
the new business had been conducted, fell back on 
the old Roxbury factory, which, in course of time, 
he enlarged to ten times its original capacity. There 
he still remains, making higher-class watches, at a 
higher price, than was at first proposed and enjoying 
an excellent reputation as a watchmaker. Other enter- 
prising men bought the Waltham factory and, con- 
quering in the course of time the early difficulties of the 
undertaking, have made the name of these works more 
widely known and connected them more closely with 
the idea of machine-made watches than any other 
concern in the world. 

Clockmaking, as we have seen, was an important 
industry in the Naugatuck valley before watchmaking 
by machinery had come to the birth, but it was not in 
the nature of the Connecticut man to be satisfied with 
the success, such as it was, of Roxbury and Waltham. 
He burned to do for watches what Chauncey Jerome 
had done for clocks ; to make them by the million, for 
the million and put them into everybody's pocket, as 
clocks had already been put upon everybody's mantel- 
piece. We shall see how far he has succeeded, when, 
after a glance at the works of the Waterbury Clock 



CLOCKLAND. 31 

Company, we find our way to the splendid factory of 
the Waterbury Watch Company, scarcely as yet five 
years old, but one of the most beautiful industrial estab- 
lishments in the world. 

The sun was hot, although the air was keen, as we 
strolled up the shady sides of Waterbury streets from 
the railway station to the centre of the busy town, 
taking notes of a few characteristic Americanisms by 
the way. I made a terrible blunder, for instance, very 
early in the day. A tourist's hair is always too long 
and, having half an hour to spare, I stepped into what I 
thought was a hair-dresser's shop and asked the smart 
girl behind the counter if I could have my hair cut. 
She smiled in a superior way, and said, " You are a 
stranger, sir, I guess ; this is a human-hair depot, and 
not a barber-shop." Turning to the window, profusely 
dressed in "bangs" and "waterfalls," I asked pardon 
if the display of these masterpieces had suggested to 
a British mind the idea of a hair-cutting saloon within. 
Softened by my humility, she then informed me that 
a dealer in " fine human hair goods " is a cut above 
a mere hair-dresser and, certainly, if a handsome shop 
in one of the best streets in the town could testify on 
her behalf, it did so in the present instance. Every 
factory girl must, of course, have a " bang," even if it is 
made of jute and costs only a few cents ; but a " water- 
fall," worth any number of dollars, seems equally a 
necessity among richer classes in the States, where this 



32 CLOCKLAND. 

human-hair business flaunts itself and flourishes in a 
very remarkable manner. 

I am afraid that the present generation is only half 
acquainted with the immortal Yankee pedlar whom 
Haliburton described with the pen of a Dickens and 
who remains to this day one of the most characteristic 
institutions of New England. But, if Twain, Harte, and 
other American humourists have overshadowed the great 
Sam for a moment, this delight of our youth will not 
die yet, for he may still be found in every town and 
village of the Eastern States. 

About a hundred and fifty years ago, an Irish tin- 
man, named William Pattison, settled at Worthington, 
in the State of Connecticut, and, after supplying all the 
village kitchens with tinware, conceived the idea of 
packing his goods in panniers on the backs of horses 
and sending them to considerable distances in charge of 
his apprentices. The venture succeeded and, by-and- 
by, the horse was supplemented by a cart, filled with 
a stock of tinware. An army of Worthington "tin- 
pedlars " soon roamed all the settled States in the Union, 
calling at every door, and compelling custom by that 
easy audacity and readiness of speech of which Sam 
Slick is the acknowledged master. 

The modern Connecticut tin-pedlar carries many 
things besides tinware, to convenience mistresses and 
tempt maids and, as we turn disappointed away from 
the " Human-Hair Depot," here is one of them coming 



CLOCKLAXD. 33 

down the street. He drives a vehicle, looking like a 
stage-coach crossed by a waggon, whose long, windowless 
body is painted red and whose wheels are bright yellow. 
The dusty machine is hung, externall}', with brooms, 
brushes and baskets, while inside it is stufifed with tin- 
ware, dry goods and " notions." At the rear, swing 
great bundles of feathers and rags, for the tin-pedlar 
barters upon occasion and, so far as rags are concerned, 
is the chief purveyor of the New England paper-makers. 
The fellow in question has the face of a double- 
distilled Yankee and wears a stove-pipe hat, made of 
tin and painted red, while his answer to our hail 
informs us that he carries a clever tongue which can 
be persuasive or brazen, as occasion requires. He is 
evidently returning after a long expedition, for he is 
not keen to do business and, watching his tired horses 
stumbling along the rough roadway, we think of him 
respectfully as one of the few old things in America, 
a sur\'ival in the countr}' where scarcely anything sur- 
vives the passage of the car of progress. 

The W'aterbury Clock Company's factory is a verit- 
able palace of industry. The building is dignified, if not 
handsome, in appearance and, as usual in America, 
specially designed for the purpose to Avhich it is applied. 
It is spacious enough for the future extension of busi- 
ness, convenient for work and comfortable in all its 
arrangements, both for master and man. 

The New England manufacturer has no notion of 

D 



34 CLOCKLAND. 

spending the greater part of his day in a dirty, ill- 
furnished, ill-ventilated room, or, indeed, of asking his 
book-keepers to do so. On the contrary, he houses 
his staff in large, handsome rooms, fitted with many 
clever devices for facilitating work, from among which 
the telephone is never absent. Most of his clerks are 
girls, who also conduct the correspondence, using the 
type-writer almost universally for this purpose. The 
offices are kept scrupulously neat and clean and their 
occupants are distinguished by an air of briskness 
very different to that which characterizes their duller 
brethren of the desk in England. The workshops, again, 
are so comfortable, and the operatives so like the masters 
in ideas and manners, that an Englishman is altogether, 
but very agreeably, surprised on his first introduction to 
a Yankee factory. 

Gloze it over as we may, there is a great gulf fixed 
between the ideas of Old and New England on this 
radical question of the dignity of work. Our industrial 
occupations consist, speaking generally, of mere money- 
spinning. The places where, and the people by whom, 
we carry them on, are cared for economically, and 
that is all. It is not in our business, but by our "posi- 
tion," that we shine in the eyes of ourselves and our 
neighbours. The social code of this country drives, yearly, 
numbers of young men, issuing from our public schools 
and universities, either into the over-crowded learned 
professions or into government clerkships, whose narrow 



CLOCKLAND. 35 

round of irresponsible duties benumbs originality and 
weakens self-reliance. Capable, educated girls are 
pining for a " career " in England, while posts, even the 
most important, are filled in New England by " young 
ladies," the equals of ours in everything which that 
phrase denotes and their superiors in all the qualities 
that are born of effort and self-help. It is no one's fault, 
and I am not going to rail at the inevitable. We were 
originallya feudal country and cannot escape the influence 
of our traditions. The man who does service for another 
was a "villein" in the feudal times and is an "inferior" 
now ; just as a man of no occupation is a " gentle- 
man," and a governess a " person." Use has made us 
unconscious of the fact that the " dignity of work " is 
a mere phrase in our mouths, while it blinds us to the 
loss of national energy which avenges outraged labour. 

I sat, one day early last September, under the razor 
of a strange barber, when my gossip, wishing to please, 
said, " You had a fine day for the partridges on the first, 
sir, this year." Now, if I like trout-fishing on occasion, 
there is certainly nothing of the sportsman about my ap- 
pearance, but this Nello of the Burlington Arcade, with 
his eye on a tip, thought he knew how to tickle me ; for 
do not all his customers like to be considered members 
of the idle classes .'' And being human, they cannot help 
it. The roots of our civilization were laid in feudality, 
although they have branched into freedom, but the tree 
has yet to bear the flower of equality. Hence, we remain 



36 CLOCKLAND. 

a race of castes, whose boundary lines are so rigid as to 
be, at present, impassable. The " upper " and " lower " 
strata of society, the idle and industrial classes, indeed, 
cannot amalgamate, for they are separated by differences 
so profound that contact between them must be attended 
either by servility or hostility. Centuries of inequality 
have so degraded labour that its ranks are now effectually 
barred to culture, and our golden youth is squandered 
while we wait for the renascence of industry. 

Matters are very different in New England. The 
owners of these brass-mills and clock-shops are proud 
of that industry which — not only with their lips, but by 
their lives — they honour. Their operatives, with whom 
one dines at every Hodgkiss House in the Naugatuck 
valley, are well educated, well mannered and intelligent 
companions, hopeful as to their own chances of success 
in life, satisfied to see cleverer men than themselves 
growing rich and honouring industry, because they, the 
children of industry, are honoured. 

But I am moralizing outside the factory, while my 
readers are anxious to go within. Having passed through 
the cheerful offices and admired the trim girl-clerks, 
our attention is pointedly drawn to a new system of 
fire-prevention, now coming into use throughout manu- 
facturing New England. These mountain towns are well 
supplied with water, whose pressure is high and supply 
constant. A network of pipes, in connection with the 
town mains, is fixed to every ceiling in the factory, the 



CLOCKLAND. 37 

pipes themselves being furnished with " sprinklers," .or 
roses, each of which commands a space of about ten 
feet square. The plugs are closed by fusible metal, 
which melts at a temperature of a hundred and fifty 
degrees, giving vent, in case of danger, to a rush of 
water sufficient to extinguish any incipient fire. As a 
concurrent effect of any one of these plugs melting, an 
alarm-bell is set violently ringing, the whole arrange- 
ment being perfectly automatic and always ready for 
action. 

The chief mechanical agent employed in making 
cheap clocks is the punch, a tool which has been 
brought to an extraordinary state of perfection, in 
Connecticut. Wheel blanks are stamped out by it about 
as fast as one can comfortably count. These are clamped 
together, sixty at a time, on a spindle which, being turned 
round step by step, exposes the edges of the blanks 
to the action of a rotary cutter, grooving out four hundred 
teeth in a minute. The clock spindles, or " pivots," are 
turned in tiny lathes, whose tools, although held in the 
hand, are furnished with stops which determine the lengths 
and diameters of the work, independently of the operator. 
The separate pieces are taken upstairs from the punch 
and lathe to be " assembled," and after this operation, 
which is an affair of a few minutes only in respect of 
a single clock, the finished " movements " are placed 
in a tray standing beside the workman. Each tray 
holds a hundred and fifty movements and, when full, 



38 CLOCKLAND. 

a boy carries it away to the " starter." This man sets 
each clock going and corrects any trifling defects in the 
previous operator's work. After running for twenty-four 
hours, the movements pass on to the " inspector," who 
returns the bad time-keepers either to the starter or 
the assembler and hands over the balance to the casing 
department, a totally distinct industry. The Waterbury 
Clock Company make about fifteen hundred clocks a 
day, and the total production of the New England 
clock-shops is not less than ten thousand a day. These 
are sold at prices varying from five shillings to ten 
pounds a piece, and are sent to every part of the 
world. 

If the Waterbury Clock Company's factory is pro- 
perly called a palace of industry, I want a new name 
to characterize that of the Waterbury Watch Company. 
The building itself looks like a fine town hall or 
museum and we, indeed, entered its handsome vestibule, 
doubtful whether we had not mistaken some public insti- 
tution for a manufactory. But we were soon reassured 
on this point by the manager, Mr. Lock, who responded 
to our letters of introduction with customary American 
kindness. 

' The watch factories of Massachusetts, whose origin 
and history have already been sketched, had long made it 
easy for people of moderate means to carry the time in 
their pockets, when it occurred to some of the long- 
sighted manufacturers of the Naugatuck valley that a 



CLOCKLAND. 39 

good, reliable watch, at a price of about three dollars, 
would find a wide, unoccupied field and might pay. 
The cheapest Waltham watch, constructed of more than 
a hundred and sixty pieces, costs a great deal more than 
three dollars, and the first thing therefore required to 
carry out the proposed programme was a good time- 
keeper, no toy, which should have fewer pieces in it than 
any existing watch. 

There came, one day, a Massachusetts watch-re- 
pairer into the Centennial Exhibition, with a steam- 
engine in his waistcoat pocket, which, although a thimble 
covered it, had a boiler, cylinder, piston, valves, governor, 
crank and crank shaft, and would work. The maker, 
Mr. Buck, placed it side by side with the great Corliss 
engine, which was one of the wonders of the Philadelphia 
show and, thus juxtaposed, these representatives of 
dignity and impudence remained throughout the exhi- 
bition. Mr. Charles Benedict, a partner in one of the 
largest brass-mills on the Naugatuck and one of the 
promoters of the cheap watch scheme, saw it, and, pre- 
sently, asked Mr. Buck to design the three-dollar watch 
of the future. He undertook the commission, and, at 
first, failed. But a Yankee inventor follows a mecha- 
nical trail with the perseverance of an Indian and, 
within a year, the watch-hunter had made a practical 
time-piece, having only fifty-eight pieces in it, all told. 
He took it to Mr. Benedict, who tested it in every 
possible way and the watch stood the tests. 



40 CLOCKLAND. 

Preparations were at once commenced to make it 
on a large scale. A factory, designed by Hartwell, the 
architect of Waltham, was erected, and two years were 
spent in filling it with the necessary tools and machinery. 
Although the watch was to be cheap, it did not follow 
that the plant for producing it should be cheap also, 
and so it happened that, when the building was finished 
and furnished, nearly half a million of dollars had 
been expended. Manufacturing operations were com- 
menced in May, 1881, and since that date the 
" Waterbury Watch," as it was called, has been steadily 
produced at the rate of six hundred a day, or one 
per minute. 

All the parts of this watch are interchangeable. If 
you had a pint each of wheels, pinions, springs and 
pivots, you could put any of them together and the 
watch so produced would go and keep time. That 
is because each piece is made by automatic machinery, 
which cannot make errors as the hand can. But if 
you took twenty Swiss watches to pieces and shuffled 
up their parts, you would spoil twenty watches, and 
not be able to make one that would go without 
fitting. 

Having told us all this and much more, Mr. Lock 
put us in charge of a guide and we made a circuit of 
the workshops. These might more appropriately be 
called saloons, so sightly are they and so beautifully 
fitted with every appliance for comfort and convenience. 



CLOCKLAND. \\ 

Entering at the operatives' door, wc came, first, upon the 
dressing-room, where each workman has his ticketed 
hooks for coat and hat, his own ticketed towel, while 
the common lavatory is equal to that of an English club. 
The girls' toilet-room is quite dainty in its arrange- 
ments, a separate supply of water, for instance, and 
separate vessels for face and hand washing being pro- 
vided. The most exact neatness and scrupulous cleanli- 
ness are ensured, by the appointment of a special attend- 
ant to this usually neglected department. 

The " train-room " and " assembly-room " constitute 
the bulk of the factory and to these everything else is 
ancillary. The first requisites of a watch factory are 
abundance of light, neatness, and cleanliness. No man 
can do his best when physically uncomfortable, whether 
from excess of heat or cold, a poor light, or, above all, 
bad air. It is now universally acknowledged, at least 
in the Naugatuck valley, that everything which con- 
tributes to the physical comfort and mental benefit 
of the workman pays a good return on its first cost. 
Hence, the walls of the train-room are all windows, 
the ceilings are high, the warming and ventilation is 
perfect. There is no smoke, dust, or bad air, and the 
operatives are comfortably seated at their respective 
benches. 

The beautiful and costly special machinery which 
aids watch-making, as carried on in the States, is 
collected in this apartment. Here the various wheels, 



42 CLOCKLAND. 

pinions, and pivots, forming the " train " of a watch, are 
made, the Httle automata which produce them being 
watched and tended, one cannot say directed, by girls. 
Here, for example, is the self-acting wheel-cutter, which 
spaces and cuts the teeth of fifty wheels at once. All 
its attendant has to do is to pick up fifty blanks, just 
as they come from the stamping department, slip them 
on a spindle, offer this to the automaton, cover the latter 
with a metal shield, to keep out dust, and start the 
machine. This, then, goes soberly on, feeding the 
wheels up to the cutters and spacing the teeth until 
all are cut, when it stops. The finished wheels are taken 
out, new blanks are supplied and the wheel-cutter 
resumes work. There, again, is an automatic "staff- 
turning lathe. The bit of steel wire on which it operates 
is only a tenth of an inch in diameter and a quarter of 
an inch long, but requires twenty-seven distinct opera- 
tions to shape it to the proper form and dimensions. 
The girl who tends this machine really superintends 
some sixteen thousand movements a day, sitting at her 
ease meanwhile in a comfortable chair, and giving her 
charge an occasional drop of oil. 

The " assembly-room " might justify its name if it 
were a question of a county ball, instead of watch- 
making. Here, the parts we have watched in the 
making are given out, by the pint and the pound, and 
grow into movements, under the deft fingers of a 
number of specially trained watch-makers, at the rate 



CLOCKLAND. 43 

of one per minute. Then they are cased and, lastly, 
placed in shallow trays, holding each about three hundred 
watches, for testing. The trays are supported upon 
pivots, and can be swung into any position between the 
vertical and horizontal. The watches remain first up- 
right, then at an angle of 45° and, finally, upside down ; 
for a space of six days altogether, going all the time. 
Those which stop, or fail to keep time, are sent back to 
the " assembly-room," while those which pass muster 
are boxed and despatched to the native and foreign 
markets. 

This factory cost, as we have seen, about half a 
million of dollars, employs three hundred hands and 
turns out six hundred watches a day. These sell for 
two dollars forty-three cents a piece, and if any one 
should ask Mr. Lock, " Why not for an even two-fifty ? " 
he might perhaps answer, as once before, to such an 
inquirer, "Don't you know? Three cents is the cost 
of the watch, the profit is an even two-forty." 

A few moments before six o'clock, we stationed 
ourselves at the factory door to watch the issuing 
operatives. Of these, the greater number are girls, 
but, girl or man, almost every one had a smile and a 
nod for the manager, a smile and nod which were 
charming because of their eloquence as to the relations 
between employer and employed. Of one, Mr. Lock 
would say, " He is our librarian ; " of another, " He 
teaches in my Sunday school ; of this girl, " She is the 



44 CLOCKLAND. 

best singer in our church choir ; " of that, " She is my 
wife's right hand at a bee." If there is miHtary dis- 
cipline inside the works, there is both friendship and 
equahty between employer and employed without its 
walls. When Jack is really as good as his master, the 
old proverb has no sting. 



CHAPTER IV. 

WINSTED — A TEMPERANCE TOWN. 

The Naugatuck valley heads about thirty miles north 
of Waterbury and as our train threads its rocky bed, 
sweeps around its frequent curves and enters its open 
bottoms, or " intervales," as they are here called, we find 
the last almost always occupied by industrial towns. 
These are seldom more than three or four miles apart, 
are all Ansonias or Waterburys in appearance, full of 
brass-mills, clock -shops, pin factories and similar 
establishments. 

Arrived within ten miles of the river's source, 
where it is no longer able to turn a mill-wheel, the 
railway leaves the stream and, crossing a low divide, 
reaches, within a few miles, another mountain stream, 
called the Mad River, This is a small but turbulent 
tributary of the Farmington, a river of considerable 
industrial importance, which drives a thousand wheels 
in its long, tortuous course through hills that turn it, 
now north, now south, on its way to join the Con- 



46 WINS TED — A TEMPERANCE TOWN. 

necticut river. The Mad River valley is the double 
of the Naugatuck, excavated in the same primitive 
rocks and bordered by similar deposits of glacial 
detritus. These have been stratified by the action of 
water, and are conspicuous by their arrangement into 
flanking terraces, upon whose level, continuous surfaces 
the railways of these New England glens seek their 
remotest water powers, as if by ready-made roads. 

The woods on either side of the valley began to 
show signs of the coming spring. Although the birches 
and chestnuts were still quite bare, the half-unfolded 
leaves of some early maples patched the dark hemlocks 
with crimson, while the bloom of an occasional dog- 
wood shone like a snowball against groves of evergreen 
pine. The river brawled loudly over its steep rocky bed 
and the air grew keen as we rose from the lower valley 
towns to a level of about seven hundred feet above the sea. 

Here lies Winsted, a half-agricultural, half-mechani- 
cal town, of six thousand souls, jammed in a rocky 
glen, which is only just wide enough to accommodate 
its main street. This curves around a wide bend in 
the noisy stream, beside which it straggles for a long 
way, a broken line of churches, factories, stores and 
private houses. Cross streets branch from it irregularly, 
ascending lateral valleys which lose themselves in 
grassy uplands and spread the dwellings of a few 
thousand people over the area of a little city. 

They have an odd way in Connecticut of giving 



WINS TED — A TEMPERANCE TOWN. 47 

compound names to such new places as grow up from 
time to time between two or more existing townships 
in the State. Winsted is a case in point. It Hes on 
the borders of Winchester and Berkhampstead, and 
has therefore been called Winsted. Waterbury itself 
is a compound of Watertown and Middlebury, Tor- 
ringford of Torrington and Hartford, and Wintonbury 
of Windsor Farmington and Simsbury. The custom 
is fruitful of names having a sound which is English in 
character without being familiar to the ear. 

A halcyon sabbath, with a turquoise sky and heavenly 
air, seemed just the day for a clean pair of boots. Ac- 
cordingly, we struggled for a time before breakfast 
with the shoe brushes, which invite travellers to help 
themselves in the " wash-room " of every rural hotel in 
New England. After a third-rate performance on these 
unaccustomed instruments, we sought the morning meal, 
consisting of Connecticut shad and Indian pudding. 
Connecticut shad has more bones than any other fish 
in the world. It is said, indeed, that an ingenious 
Connecticut man once constructed an automatic machine, 
which, upon turning a handle, delivered one stream of 
fish into the mouth, and another of bones behind the 
back. Everything went well with the inventor on a 
first trial and might have so continued but for an un- 
fortunate accident. The machine was new, the motion 
unaccustomed and, in his anxiety to take note of certain 
imperfect details, the schemer forgot which way the 



48 WINS TED — A TEMPERANCE TOWN. 

handle turned. One only revolution in the wrong 
direction was enough. The shad went over his 
shoulder, the bones into his throat, and the Connecticut 
man was choked before any one could say "Jack 
Robinson." His secret died with him, but not so the 
shad-bones, which still remain, the peril of American 
dinner-tables, the puzzle of American inventors. 

And Indian pudding ^ Well, that is a kind of fritter 
made of maize flour, a dish which, in old colonial days, 
was eaten boiled on Saturday, while what remained " the 
queen next day had fried." These fine distinctions of 
right and wrong are not confined to New England. I 
remember, when a boy, that the Sunday dinner of cold 
meat was, indeed, relieved by boiled potatoes, but " it was 
wrong " to cook anything else. In the same way, baked 
potatoes were an orthodox dish for Sunday's supper, in 
families where it would have been thought sinful to grill 
a steak or toast a Welsh rarebit. They were not too 
good to boil and bake for us on the sabbath at Winsted, 
but the man must be an infidel or an agnostic who 
breakfasts without Indian pudding on the Lord's day 
in New England. 

The village streets were as silent as the grave when 
we sallied out of the hotel for a morning walk. The 
white wooden houses, with their green jalousies, looked 
prim and prudish, while a most uncompromising church 
dominated the silent streets with a stark wooden spire. 
Presently, a stream of young people of both sexes, neat 



W INST ED — A TEMPERANCE TOWN. 49 

in dress and proper in manner, filed this way and that 
to their respective Sunday schools. At nine o'clock 
precisely, the church bell began to ring, not for the 
assembly of worshippers, but a "warning peal." This, 
in the colonial days, when a clock, as we have seen, was 
an heirloom, told the outlying farmers it was time to 
hitch up their teams and start with their families for the 
meeting-house. The bell still continues to toll, although 
every rural mantelpiece is now furnished with its two- 
dollar timepiece. Tin-pedlars, it seems, are not the only 
survivals in New England. 

We strolled upwards from the main street towards 
the grassy slopes which surround the town, admiring the 
beautiful foliage of the hemlocks and wondering at the 
number of cottages which we saw in course of erection. 
The artisans of New England live, much more commonly 
than those of Old England, in their own houses. One- 
half of the wage-earners in the manufacturing State of 
Massachusetts rent their houses, but one-fourth of them 
are house-owners, while the remaining fourth are lodgers. 
There are, of course, differences between "one district and 
another in this respect ; such towns as those we have 
already visited having many more freeholders than the 
large industrial cities. Freeholders are fewer in the 
textile than in other industries, only one man in ten 
owning his own house at Fall River, the Manchester 
of America. At Winchendon, on the other hand, where 
they make wooden ware, at Westfield, where they make 

E 



50 WINS TED — A TEMPERANCE TOWN. 

whips, at Lynn, where they make boots and shoes, one 
workman in every four is a house-owner. 

Building is certainly made easy for operatives in 
New England. At Winsted, Mr. Gilbert, one of the 
largest clock-masters in the district, puts up houses for 
any of his men at the rate of seven hundred dollars, or 
£\Afi, for house and lot, a hundred dollars being paid 
down and the balance standing on easy terms of interest 
and repayment. Mr. Gilbert is a rich man, who likes 
this kind of investment, but his practice only gives 
effect to the principles of New England manufacturers 
generally. They are convinced that the magic of pro- 
perty makes men at once better citizens and more 
valuable servants. Hence, where there are no Gilberts, 
the banks take their places and no steady operative finds 
it difficult to build a house, while many of them do so 
without borrowing money. These artisans' dwellings 
are not only roomy and comfortable, but very attrac- 
tive in appearance. They have basements of cut stone, 
surmounted by a tasteful superstructure of wood, a 
wide verandah, kitchen, parlour and bedroom on the 
ground floor and three bedrooms above, besides cup- 
boards and pantries. They are always painted white 
and adorned with green jalousies, both these features 
being as much de rigueur as Indian pudding for sabbath 
day's breakfast. When these pretty homes, with their 
clean faces, well-tilled quarter-acre lots and windows 
aglow with geraniums, are scattered, as in the Mad River 



WINS TED — A TEMPERANCE TOWN. 51 

and Naugatuck valleys, amid beautiful mountain glens, 
they suggest that American labour lives in an atmosphere 
characterized by something which is more than comfort 
if less than culture. It is time, indeed, to step within 
doors and see how the Connecticut artisan, whose 
acquaintance we have already made in the workshop, 
appears chez lid. 

Our friend Mr. S is an Ansonia mechanic who 

occupies the ground floor of his own house, which is 
considerably larger than the single houses already 
described, and lets the upper part to a fellow operative. 
His pretty cottage looks, upwards, to the wooded slopes 
of the Green Mountain range ; downwards, upon the river 
Naugatuck, with its blue lake-like mill-ponds and sur- 
rounding factories, from whose distant chimneys arises 
nothing worse than white puffs of steam. We found his 
wife and daughter reading on the verandah, and were 
welcomed by them with a manner charmingly com- 
pounded of simplicity, independence and the wish to 
please. Within, was a pleasant sitting-room, furnished 
with all the comforts and some of the luxuries 
of life. The tables were strewn with books. For 
musical instruments there was the American organ, 
while some pretty photographs adorned the walls. No 
refreshment was offered us, for they drink nothing in 
temperate New England and no one eats between the 
regular meal hours. 

The conversation fell on American history and 



52 WINS TED — A TEMPERANCE TOWN. 

particularly on the period just prior to the War of In- 
dependence, If it was delightful to find ample know- 
ledge and critical appreciation of the men and events 
of that stirring time, it was touching to learn in what 
respect the heroes of the revolution are held by all 

native Americans. Mrs. S , for example, regarded 

it as a real privilege to have been born at Concord, 
and her daughter looked ardently forward to some day 
seeing the famous North Bridge in that city, where 
British soldiers first met and recoiled from a handful 
of militia-men, pulling maiden triggers on behalf of 
national independence. Thus we spent a most plea- 
sant hour, and when it was time to go, were uncertain 
which most to admire, the education, the high moral 
tone, the logical habit of mind, or the readiness to 
welcome new ideas which characterized the whole family. 
Like many other freeholders of the same class, Mr. 

S lets one-half his house and lives in the other, 

his tenant being a German-American mechanic, whose 
wife only was at home when we called. Well, indeed, 
does this bright little woman deserve her name of 
Rosenbaum, for she lives surrounded by flowers, of 
which she is an ardent lover and successful cultivator. 
Roses and geraniums crowded every corner of Mrs. 
Rosenbaum's room, so that our talk fell naturally on 
her hobby, which she discussed with great enthusiasm 
and many smiles. Although the same people, we were 
no longer the same party as when below stairs. A 



WINS TED — A TEMPERANCE TOWN 53 

gleam of continental brightness shone from the cheery 
German frau over Yankee seriousness and English 
phlegm. Her national character had gained indepen- 
dence from American associations, without losing its 
lighter, pleasure-loving traits. A family of six children 
lived on this modest flat ; but they had all evidently 
been trained in habits of extreme neatness, for every 
room, from kitchen to attic, was spotlessly clean and in 
apple-pie order. 

Such are the homes of native American labour and 
of those foreign workmen who have lived for a long 
time under native American influences. We shall here- 
after find, among immigrant artisans, dwellings and 
tenants corresponding much more closely than do these 
to our notions of workmen and workmen's homes. Al- 
ready, indeed, we foresee that important questions, as to 
the reciprocal influence of European labour and American 
ideas, will arise as we proceed, but these we are not 
yet in a position to discuss. For the present we are 
content to note that the wave of emigration which has 
already flooded many American industries, especially 
the textiles, has not yet risen to great heights in 
dockland. There, as in the boot and shoe factories 
of Massachusetts, the operatives are still, for the most 
part, genuine Yankees, although their numbers are con- 
stantly being diminished by the attractions which the . 
Far West offers to enterprising natures. 

A casual acquaintance, who joined us in our Sunday 



54 W INST ED — A TEMPERANCE TOWN. 

morning stroll, was himself building a house on one 
of Mr. Gilbert's lots, having been blown out of his old 
home some months before by a cyclone. New England 
is not often visited by these terrific storms, which are 
common in some Western States, but this was a par- 
ticularly destructive occurrence. The whirlwind de- 
scended, in the first instance, over a bare mountain 
shoulder into the Winsted valley, crossing which, it 
completely destroyed ten solidly built houses. Then 
it roared up an opposite hillside, making a clear lane 
about twenty yards wide and several miles long, through 
the forest covering of the mountain. Each of the houses 
in question was lifted completely off the ground, carried 
forward for several yards and then dropped, becoming 
instantly converted into a shapeless heap of debris. We 
found a brick chimney, lying on the ground in fragments, 
at least fifty yards distant from the dwelling to which 
it had belonged. The stoutest beams were shattered, 
while the staircases and wooden linings of the rooms 
were thrashed into matchwood. The wrecked roofs 
were stripped bare of shingles and even granite founda- 
tion stones were in some cases torn from their beds and 
tossed hither and thither. Fences which once crossed 
the track of the storm had disappeared into space. Trees 
in its course were twisted short off and their fractures 
looked like bundles of slivers. In one remarkable case, 
a piece of pine board, some eight feet long, had struck 
a large elm tree in its flight through the air. The blow 



WINS TED — A TEMPERANCE TOWN. 55 

was between a plump and a graze and the board 
completely penetrated the bark, in which it remained 
firmly fixed, with half 'its length protruding on either 
side of the elm. Strange to say, no lives were lost in 
this storm, although all the houses were inhabited and 
that of our companion contained nearly a dozen people 
at the time of the occurrence. The buildings, indeed, 
seemed to be taken bodily from over the heads of those 
within and dashed to pieces several yards away from 
their original sites. 

We were late in returning to our hotel for midday 
dinner, and this, a grave fault on week-days, is, on 
Sundays, a crime which, if not openly reprimanded, 
demands some sort of rebuke. Household "help" in 
America is quite as independent as any other form of 
labour, and a girl who has bargained, either to cook 
or to wait at table during certain hours of the day, 
resents the tarrying of guests as a "breach of contract 
Hence, a certain acidity in our prim waitress' tone when 
reciting the simple menu, and a notable increase in the 
velocity with which the young lady usually slung us our 
food. We took our punishment penitently, however, 
for the girl, if petulant, was pretty ; but we dared not 
offer any one of those propitiatory little attentions which 
would have made an English maid kind to worse 
culprits than we. 

Although the sale of alcoholic liquors is lawful 
in every State of New England except Maine, "local 



56 WINS TED — A TEMPERANCE TOWN. 

option " forbids the drink traffic in many towns, 
and this is the case at Winsted. The Maine hquor 
law is frequently spoken of in England as if it were 
peculiar to that State, and is sometimes accused of 
promoting habits of secret drinking. The first idea 
is a mistaken one, as the case of Winsted proves, while 
the baselessness of the second supposition is best 
understood by mixing with the operatives of New 
England generally. They, although rarely professed 
teetotallers, are universally abstainers. Beer is never 
seen on the tables of the houses where they board, or 
drank in their own homes. The public-house is hard 
to find in many New England towns where the sale of 
liquor is not forbidden, the bar-loafer is a rarity, and it is 
quite impossible to meet the slattern, so common in our 
own streets, carrying home her jug of " eleven o'clock." 

The voters for " no liquor " are, usually, themselves 
working men. It is the clock-makers, the scythe- 
grinders, the axle-smiths and the silk-spinners of 
Winsted who have closed the public-house, but 
American mill-owners, storekeepers and farmers are 
almost unanimously in favour of the temperance ticket 
and hold " rum towns " in horror. American operatives 
are advocates of temperance for a reason which is, 
unfortunately, of little applicability in Europe. None 
of them begin life with the expectation of being always 
mere labourers. All intend to possess a comfortable 
degree of property and independence. The ascent to 



WINSTED — A TEMPERANCE TOWN. 57 

better circumstances is open and they are very few 
who do not attempt to rise. Even if a man fails him- 
self to escape out of the position of a wage-earner, 
he has hopes for his children, and is, in the mean time, 
profoundly convinced that the chances of life are 
improved almost as much by sobriety as by education. 
It is his reasonable ambition that makes him the 
ally of the social reformer and there is little fear of 
his trying to evade a law which he believes to be 
beneficial to him and his. No doubt liquor is sold 
on the sly in teetotal towns, just as pockets are picked, 
although thieving is illegal. But offenders against 
sobriety, in a society bent on the practice of self- 
restraint, will not be many. 

It is easy to bring this conclusion to the test of facts 
in the State of Massachusetts. Barnstaple, one of its 
counties, has a population of thirty-two thousand people, 
and no liquor saloons in any of its townships. Here, 
in a given year, there were only four convictions for 
drunkenness. The county of Suffolk, on the other 
hand, has one drinking saloon for every hundred and 
seventy-five of its inhabitants, and there, in the same 
year, one man out of every fifty was convicted of 
intoxication. The case of Sheffield is quite abnormal 
in New England, but, comparing county with county 
in the commonwealth of Massachusetts, it appears that 
the number of public-houses and the prevalence of 
crime advance d\.m.o?>\. pari passu. 



58 WINS TED — A TEMPERANCE TOWN. 

The temperance reformers of Europe have spent 
much eloquence and based much argument upon the 
more or less casual and scattered observations of private 
individuals . in endeavouring to determine to what 
extent intemperance influences the commission of crime. 
What such advocates require to give force to their 
conclusions is the strength of facts, collected within 
given limits of space and time, and collated in a 
systematic manner. These are furnished in two re- 
markable reports of the Massachusetts Bureau of 
Labour Statistics for 1880-1 88 1, which dealt at great 
length with the relations of crime and intemperance, 
presenting statistics of a kind which nothing short of 
a royal commission could procure in this country. 
It was thus, in the first place, shown that sixty per cent, 
of all the crimes committed within the limits of the 
commonwealth of Massachusetts, during a period of 
twenty years, consisted of " rum offences," drunken- 
ness, illegal liquor dealing, or liquor nuisances. When 
this fact had been established, the Bureau attacked the 
question of how far drink was concerned in the forty 
per cent, balance of crime remaining unaccounted for 
after the first inquiry ? The investigation was long, 
and, from the nature of the case, a difficult one, but 
there seems no reason to doubt the accuracy of its very 
remarkable conclusions. These, in half a dozen words, 
declare that eighty-four per cent, of all the crime 
committed in the commonwealth during the twenty- 



WINS TED — A TEMPERANCE TOWN. 59 

year period in question was caused, either directly or 
indirectly, by liquor. Only sixteen crimes in every 
hundred committed by sober men ! Well may the 
hard-headed statistician lose something of his judicial 
attitude in the closing words of his report on " Intem- 
perance and Crime." "These figures," says Colonel 
Wright, " paint a picture at once faithful and hideous 
of the power of rum, and this investigation, by revealing 
the disproportionate magnitude of offences due, either 
directly or indirectly, to liquor, calls for earnest attention 
at the bar of public opinion and by the public conscience 
of this commonwealth." 

The public conscience has already shut up the 
public-house in hundreds of New England towns. Let 
those who are sincerely anxious to know what results 
may be expected from the interference of public option 
with private privilege spend, as we did, a Sunday at 
Winsted. The order of this village, the prosperity of 
its operative population, the peace and purity of their 
lives, the independence of their characters and simplicity 
of their manners will be enough to convince any un- 
prejudiced man, abstainer or not, that no greater 
blessing has befallen this town than the abolition of 
its liquor saloons. 



CHAPTER V. 

AMONG THE BERKSHIRE HILLS : GREAT BARRINGTON. 

It was a glorious evening when we left Winsted to push 
our way westward, over the high divide which separates 
the minor valleys of the Naugatuck and Mad River 
from that of the grander Housatonic. For the first half 
of this journey, the train labours upwards through a wild 
country, covered with birch woods and strewn with 
gneissic boulders, while the reclaimed pastures of 
scattered mountain-farms skirt the railroad track here 
and there. At the summit, fourteen hundred feet above 
sea-level, stands Norfolk, a trim white town, full of 
knitting-mills and surrounded by cultivated land. The 
last stretches widely on either side of the Blackberry 
River, a brook near Norfolk, but soon swelling to a con- 
siderable stream, which flows westward towards the Hou- 
satonic, through a smiling valley of pastures sprinkled 
with neat farmhouses. The railroad follows the course 
of this stream, keeping, as usual, upon a terrace of drift 
which, in this case, is of considerable elevation. Thence 
the eye wanders down to the sheltered bottoms, where 



AMONG THE BERKSHIRE HILLS. 61 

a line of pale green willows, skirting the stream, an- 
nounces the lagging spring, and up to the birchen crests 
which hem in this beautiful dell. 

Soon after leaving Norfolk, we came in sight of the 
Taconic Range, a high and picturesque ridge forming 
the western boundary of the Housatonic valley. The 
sun had already declined, and this chain of dome-like 
hills was clothed in a garment of intense and exquisite 
blue, which hid every detail of mountain structure and 
exhibited the range as a silhouette of indigo upon a 
background of primrose sky. Behind the clear-obscure 
and enchanting profile of the hills, the misty peaks 
of the distant Catskills rose in the evening air, reminding 
us that, between their shadowy slopes and the blue 
Taconics, the mighty Hudson was sliding to the 
sea, freighted with the commerce of half a continent. 
Presently the train whirled closely past one, then 
another and another flaming iron furnace, while, high 
above our heads, the ashy birchen crests of the Black- 
berry Hills were streaked with pale blue smoke wreaths, 
rising from the scattered fires of charcoal hearths. 

After making a junction with the Whiting River, 
which flows into it from the north, the Blackberry ceases 
to be a rapid stream and begins to wind through a 
level, cultivated plain of considerable extent, one of the 
intervales of the Housatonic, across which the train 
runs for several miles before striking the latter river. 
On the way, we passed the little town of Sheffield, an 



62 AMONG THE BERKSHIRE HILLS. 

island of houses in a sea of ploughed fields and pastures, 
shaded by giant elms, and the first settlement ever made 
in the Housatonic valley. Its site was bought, in 1724, 
from a famous Indian chief, named Konkepot, for £a,^0 
in money, three barrels of cider and thirty quarts of 
rum, while the village which arose on the spot was 
named after Edmund Sheffield, Duke of Buckingham, 
by Obadiah Noble, the first white settler. This intervale 
crossed, the railroad sweeps by a wide curve into the 
Housatonic valley, whose course we followed northward, 
for a few miles to Great Barrington. 

Great Barrington is the chief town of Berkshire, the 
loveliest county of lovely Western Massachusetts, the 
home at various times of Longfellow, Hawthorne, 
Holmes, Neville and Thoreau, and the theme of 
Bryant's most melodious song. Nowhere does the 
Housatonic traverse such beautiful scenery as in its 
course through the Berkshire Hills. Here, along its 
western borders, lie the chief domes of the Taconic 
Range, which rise to heights of two and three thousand 
feet, concealing their massiveness by flowing outlines 
and aerial draperies of heavenly blue. Eastwards, the 
world is shut out by the Hoosacs, a long spur of the 
Green Mountains, whose summits have hitherto been 
hidden from us in the narrower valleys. Each of these 
ranges is but one of the many undulations constituting 
the Alleghanies, which rise like waves from the Atlantic 
slope and break towards the west. Along the trough 



AMONG THE BERKSHIRE HILLS. 63 

of such an earth-billow, the river and the railroad thread 
their way together, the curves of the landscape on one 
side of the cars being those of a rocky wave, which has, 
so to speak, passed under the track and is travelling 
westward, while crags and precipices, on the other side, 
represent the breaking crests of another undulation 
advancing from the eastward. Northwards, spanning 
the valley and bounding the view in that direction, the 
twin peaks of Greylock rise majestically, three thousand 
five hundred feet, into the air. These form part of the 
Greylock Range, which connects the Hoosacs with the 
Taconics about the head waters of the river, making 
a grand figure-head for the county of Berkshire, 

" Come from the steeps where look majestic forth, 
From their twin thrones, the giants of the north, 
On the huge shapes, that crouching at their knees, 
Stretch their broad shoulders, rough with shaggy trees. 
Through the wide waste of ether, not in vain, 
Their softened gaze shall reach our distant plain ; 
There, while the mourner turns his aching eyes 
On the blue mounds that print the bluer skies, 
Nature shall whisper that the fading view 
Of mightiest grief may wear a heavenly hue." * 

Within this mountain valley lie cradled fat grassy 
bottoms and wide terraces of fertile soil, whence frequent 
villages and the scattered homes of wealth and refine- 
ment look down upon the silver stream, or up to the 
blue hills that fence this Arcadia from the world. Nor 

* Oliver Wendell Holmes. 



64 AMONG THE BERKSHIRE HILLS. 

is manufacturing industry absent from the Housatonic, 
which turns the wheels of woollen and paper-mills 
throughout its whole length. 

Great Barrington enjoys the distinction of being the 
place where England's right to tax her American 
colonies was first disputed. July the sixth, 1774, 
was signalized in the county of Berkshire by the meet- 
ing of sixty delegates, duly elected by various town- 
ships, for the purpose of " considering the acts of the 
British Parliament, made with a view to the raising of 
a revenue in America." This convention unanimously 
repudiated the rights which England claimed, and urged 
the colonies to unite in a policy of " non-consumption," 
whereby, while British goods were rigorously excluded, 
nothing would be done that was " hostile, traitorous, or 
contrary to our allegiance due to the king." When, a 
few weeks later, the royal assent was given to bills 
reaffirming the powers of England and imposing the 
obnoxious taxes, the dissatisfaction of Berkshire found 
expression in an act of actual contumacy. The i6th 
of August, 1774, was the day and Great Barrington the 
place appointed for the session of the King's Court of 
Common Pleas. Early in the morning, a body of men, 
assembling from all parts of the county, took possession 
of the Court House, filling it to overflowing and effectu- 
ally preventing the transaction of any business. The 
people, in fact, refused to acknowledge the judges' 
authority, and insisted on their leaving the town. 



AMONG THE BERKSHIRE HILLS. 65 

Nor did the patriotism of Berkshire exhaust itself 
in the resolutions of a convention and demonstrations 
against the King's Court, but busied itself forthwith in 
raising regiments and making warlike preparations for 
the hostilities which were felt to be impending. And 
when, just a year after the event described, "the em- 
battled farmers " first " fired the shot heard round the 
world," it was Berkshire that caught its earliest echoes. 
The news of Lexington, fought on August 19th, was at 
once borne by swift horsemen to every town in New 
England, It reached the county about noon on the 
20th and by sunrise of the 21st, Colonel Patterson's 
regiment, of which the Great Barrington minute-men 
formed a part, was marching, equipped, armed and, for 
the most part, in uniform, to join in the coming struggle 
for national independence. 

The town, as I have said, is agricultural rather than 
industrial in character while farming has been, so to 
speak, upon its trial for a long time past in New England. 
The country of the Pilgrim Fathers is unfavourable to 
agriculture. Its hilly and often mountainous surface, 
its hard rocks, bristling forests and scanty soils, offer a 
field to the plough very different from that of the tree- 
less plains and deep loams of the middle and western 
States. To till the " stern and rock-bound " coasts of 
Massachusetts Bay was a task for the stout arms and 
iron wills of its first settlers and would never have been 
attempted, even by them, if the great natural meadows 

F 



66. AMONG THE BERKSHIRE HILLS. 

of America had been open then, as they are now, to 
every emigrant. With the entry of the West, indeed, 
upon the agricultural stage of the world, farming in 
New England, as in Old England, assumed a new 
character. It was no longer possible for either country 
to grow the traditionally " important crops " to the same 
advantage as before. A change of front became inevit- 
able, and is now in progress, both here and there. 

Hence, the apparent decay in agricultural interests, 
illustrations of which meet one at every turn in Mas- 
sachusetts. We saw mountain farms, in the neighbour- 
hood of Winsted, going begging for customers at a tenth 
of their original cost, and found a dwindling population 
in all agricultural towns remote from the markets fur- 
nished by manufacturing centres. Rather more than 
half the towns in this very county of Berkshire, for 
example, have lost fourteen per cent, of their inhabitants 
since 1865 ; while in Middlesex, the second farming 
county in the State, one town in every five has parted 
with three-fourths of its people during the same period. 

Notwithstanding all which, the agriculture of New 
England, speaking generally, is not on the decline. The 
farmer has given up raising barley, wheat, oats and 
potatoes in the same quantities as formerly, but the 
place of these crops has been more than filled by an 
increase in the production of milk, eggs, table vegetables 
and small fruits. These, indeed, are now the important 
crops of Massachusetts. Twelve times as many eggs 



AMONG THE BERKSHIRE HILLS. 67 

and forty times as much milk are produced in this State 
than was the case thirty years ago, while the increase 
in such crops as beets, carrots, beans, cranberries, onions 
and turnips is almost equally great. The total value 
of the farm produce of Massachusetts has, indeed, 
increased by nearly twenty per cent, within ten years, 
a fact which dispels any gloomy visions that might be 
conjured up by empty farms around Winsted and else- 
where. 

New England has, none the less, passed through an 
agricultural crisis, and if she has been spared an " agri- 
cultural depression," that is because the Yankee farmer 
is a schemer of the same kind, although not in the 
same degree, as the Connecticut man. Driven from the 
cultivation of the so-called important crops, he soon 
discovered others of even greater value and turned 
the wants of the manufacturing towns to good account 
in his efforts at self-help. It is in curious contrast with 
this versatility on the part of the American freeholding 
farmer that our own tenant farmers have, during the 
last twenty years, let a trade in butter, eggs and poultry, 
worth twenty millions sterling per annum, slip into the 
hands of the French and the Dutch. 

It goes without saying that the New England farmer 
is a totally different person from the highly characterized 
Englishman, with whom most of us have tramped the 
September stubbles, and some of us have dined, drunk 
brandy-and-water, and smoked a " churchwarden " at 



68 AMONG THE BERKSHIRE HILLS. 

market tables. The former is always, in the first place, 
a proprietor. Tenancy for rent is practically unknown 
in America, although men sometimes " let " some of 
their land upon the " metayer," or share of profit, system. 
The farms are always small. In Massachusetts, for 
example, more than half of them are between twenty 
and a hundred acres in extent, the greater part of the 
remaining half are even smaller, while there are very 
few properties containing more than three hundred 
acres. For every four of these farms, again, there are 
but three labourers, so that we have here a state of 
things differing in every respect as widely as possible 
from that tripartite agricultural economy, whose ideal 
perfection was first discovered by Lord Beaconsfield. 
But whatever the theoretical advantages possessed by 
the English triad of squire, farmer, and labourer, it 
is beyond all question that the American combination 
of freeholder, husbandman and help in one man 
stimulates energy and develops ingenuity in a very 
remarkable manner. 

Our friend Mr. Wheeler, for example, a descen- 
dant of Captain Truman Wheeler, one of the Great 
Barrington minute-men of 1775, is a modest land- 
owner and farmer, living in the near neighbourhood 
of his ancestral town and an excellent type of his class. 
Plain in his dress, which is that of a citizen, distinguished 
by some je ne sais quoi of the soil, simple in manner 
and direct in speech, he seems at once an agriculturist, 



AMONG THE BERKSHIRE HILLS. 69 

a merchant and a public man. But, being a farmer, 
an Englishman thinks him most distinguished by that 
extreme readiness to entertain and consider new ideas, 
which is, perhaps, the most notable feature of New 
England character. 

The strength of America, in Mr. Wheeler's opinion, 
lies chiefly in the farmer class. The love of the home- 
stead is a passion which, united with only moderate 
prosperity, gives birth to a patriotism, such as neither 
the great mill-owner, on the one hand, nor the well-paid 
operative, on the other, can possibly feel. But this love 
of the land is accompanied by no corresponding dislike 
of trade and manufacture, which the American land- 
owner encourages to the utmost of his power and 
treats with the highest respect. Indeed, since com- 
petition with the West has compelled the change of face 
in New England farming of which I have already 
spoken, Mr. Wheeler's chief customers for dairy produce 
and table vegetables are the operatives of the Housatonic 
valley. Employing scarcely any labour himself, he has 
no quarrel with factory rates of wages, but is keenly 
alive to the advantage of a well-to-do and numerous 
clientele. New England farmers are all advocates for 
well-paid labour, which they have, curiously enough, been 
brought to look upon as the result of a protectionist 
policy. They do not yet understand, what I hope will 
become clear when we come to discuss the tariff by-and- 
by, that American rates of wages are determined by 



70 AMONG THE BERKSHIRE HILLS. 

agriculture instead of manufacture, by free trade and 
not by protection. That the American operative should 
credit his exceptionally high wages to the " protection 
of labour " is not at all surprising, but it is astonishing 
to find the intelligent American farmer, who himself 
really determines the wages rates of the country, sharing 
the same delusive belief 

Returning from Mr. Wheeler's farm to Great Bar- 
rington, we crossed the Housatonic by a wide bridge, 
one of those remarkably skilful, if not aesthetic, struc- 
tures so common in the States, which still bear the 
name of " Howe" trusses, in memory of the clever Con- 
necticut carpenter, who first devised these simple but 
scientific wooden girders. There is a story told about 
this bridge by Dr. Dwight, the chronicler of the New 
England of the last century, which is as remarkable as 
it is well authenticated. " A Mr. Van Rensselaer, a 
young gentleman from Albany, came one evening into 
an inn, kept by Mr. Root, just at the eastern end of the 
bridge. The innkeeper, who knew him, asked him 
where he had crossed the river. He answered, ' On the 
bridge ! ' Mr. Root replied that that was impossible, 
because it had been raised that very day, and that not 
a plank had yet been relaid upon it. Mr. Van Rens- 
selaer said this could not be true, because his horse had 
come over it without difhculty or reluctance ; that the 
night was indeed so profoundly dark as to prevent him 
from seeing anything distinctly, but that it was in- 



AMONG THE BERKSHIRE HILLS. 71 

credible, if his horse could see sufficiently well to keep 
his footing anywhere, that he should not discern the 
danger, and impossible for him to pass the bridge in 
that condition. Each went to bed dissatisfied, neither 
believing the story of the other. In the morning, Mr. 
Van Rensselaer went, at the solicitation of his host, to 
view the bridge and, finding it a naked frame, gazed a 
moment with astonishment, and then fainted." 

My companion, who had lately purchased a building 
site of singular and romantic beauty, lying upon the 
Housatonic River, desired, on our return, to refer to his 
title, thus giving me an opportunity of seeing how the 
transfer of real estate is managed in New England. 
Entering the Town Hall, we found a lady, the daughter 
of the town clerk, in charge of the Land Registration 
Office and in one of her big books the required docu- 
ment was found in a few moments. It consisted of a 
very short deed, describing the boundaries of the fifteen 
acres in question and containing a contract to sell and 
to buy the same, the whole being couched in perfectly 
simple language. Every transfer and mortgage of real 
estate is recorded in this succinct way in the register of 
each township. This contains a complete, intelligible 
and easily accessible history of local land-ownership, 
running back to the first purchases made by settlers from 
the original Indian proprietors. The fee for such regis- 
tration is one dollar, and so easily can the validity of 
titles be ascertained under this system, that intelligent 



72 AMONG THE BERKSHIRE HILLS. 

men frequently, as in the present instance, buy and sell 
land, just as they would the crops upon it, without the 
intervention of a lawyer and, therefore, without expense. 

That a lady should be the transcriber and custodian of 
the Great Barrington Land Register is not a remarkable 
thing, but that we should have been able to transact a 
piece of important business, in a public office, with so 
much ease and despatch and receive so much polite 
assistance and prompt attention as fell, it seemed quite 
naturally, to our lot, struck me as noteworthy. It is 
indeed difficult for Englishmen to realize how truly the 
public offices of America are placed at the service of 
the people. One seems to do officials an actual kindness, 
whether in Town Halls, or State Bureaux, by asking 
questions, or requesting references to public documents. 
Certainly, in the present instance, nothing could be more 
agreeable than the quarter of an hour of pleasant and 
instructive chat about the affairs of her native town, to 
which I was made welcome by the custodian of its land 
records, while my companion was making his notes. 

Leaving the Town Hall, we took " supper," or " high 
tea," as we should call it, in one of the modest little 
white houses, whose appearance I have already en- 
deavoured to bring before the reader. This was the 
residence of Mrs. Whiting, a widow, and of her two 
daughters, all old friends and the latter old school- 
fellows of my companion. We were a pleasant party of 
six and a merrier group could scarcely have been gathered 



AMONG THE BERKSHIRE HILLS. 73 

around a simpler table. The last might have satisfied 
a Savarin, although a mayonnaise of salmon, buckwheat 
cakes hot from the stove, maple syrup and cranberry 
pies were its chief delicacies. The girls were a charming 
combination of good sense and gaiety, humourists by 
the grace of God and women of affairs by the force of 
circumstances and education. How brightly the talk 
hovered ! now over the affairs of the day, men and books ; 
then over the recollections of school life, to alight gently, 
sometimes, on personal gossip. But when matters of 
deeper interest asked attention, we found the whole 
party distinguished by a habit of forming independent 
judgments and a power of incisive expression, such as 
one never meets with among irresponsible, because 
unemployed, women. 

For this, too, was a home of industry, supported 
entirely by the earnings of its two daughters, of whom 
one was a compositor and the other a storekeeper's 
clerk. In the trim little white house, there was no 
servant, the dainty meal we sat down to was cooked, 
the table set and cleared by the deft hands of our enter- 
tainers themselves. Yet there hung no shadow of a 
shade of mauvaise honte over their bright frank faces 
and they were, indeed, happily incapable of understand- 
ing that any social disabilities could follow the fact that 
they earned an honourable living by the practice of 
respectable handicrafts. 

Strangely enough, as we should think, these same 



74 AMONG THE BERKSHIRE HILLS. 

New Englanders, who see no shame in labour, have a 
pride of birth which, although of a different character, 
is more intense than any existing in Europe. Fifty 
years ago there was a strong and deeply seated preju- 
dice, lurking everywhere in the New England mind, 
against the cultivation, in any degree, of ancestral or 
family history. It was regarded as a breach of good 
taste, if not an offence against morality, to speak of 
an ancestor with anything approaching interest. This 
sentiment was rooted in those fundamental ideas of 
equality which underlie all American institutions, and 
so great was the fear of seeming proud, or self-impor- 
tant, that men agreed in pronouncing it honourable 
to be ignorant of their origin. This feeling, however, 
was not absolutely universal, even at the period in 
question. More than half a century ago, an octoge- 
narian New Englander, one of whose ancestors had 
been concerned, even to the employment of force, in 
checking the tyranny of Andros' colonial government, 
said to another distinguished man, "The time will 
come, sir, when it will be accounted honourable to 
have descended from the men who settled this 
country." 

His prophecy has already been fulfilled. In the 
autumn of 1844, a little knot of antiquarians, living 
at Boston, determined on the establishment of the 
•'New England Historic-Genealogical Society." This, 
within the next twenty-five years, became an impor- 



AMONG THE BERKSHIRE HILLS. 75 

tant institution and has now a handsome home in 
the city, a Hbrary of sixty thousand volumes, members 
to the number of a thousand, an income of K4000 
and a property of some ^40,000. Its influence upon 
the state of pubHc opinion has been most remarkable. 
The first number of its journal appeared in 1847, 
prior to which date only thirty-two family pedigrees 
had ever been printed in America, and these, for the 
most part, were limited in extent and inferior in 
character. Since the year 1847, more than seven 
hundred genealogies have been printed, of which by far 
the greater number were produced in New England, 
while the histories of some two hundred New England 
towns have been published by subscribers to, or readers 
of, the society's register. The magazine itself contains 
historical outlines of more than five hundred English 
families and more than a thousand genealogies. 

No other publication has ever, anywhere, occupied 
the same field, or undertaken the same work, and, 
probably, there is no other people besides the Americans 
whose family history, for two hundred and fifty odd 
years, is so fully woven into its public and private 
records. It lives in the notes of a periodical press, 
reaching back through a hundred and seventy years, 
in the ample archives of towns and schools, in the 
registered titles of landed property, in the corporations 
of Church and State, and in the prolific correspondence 
of a social and intelligent people. The whole fabric of 



76 AMONG THE BERKSHIRE HILLS. 

New England life is sketched in the pages of the 
Historic-Genealogical Journal and exhibited in a way 
which, if fragmentary, is truthful and life-like. With 
these early letters, papers and minutely detailed public 
records in hand, it needs little enthusiasm and only a 
moderate fancy to transport one's self into the very heart 
of the colonial times. We see, again, the patriarchs of the 
country walk in their quiet streets, we sit at their frugal 
board, ponder their profound theologies and marvel at 
the spectacle of religious zeal combining with the love 
of liberty to work out, by their mutual action and reac- 
tion, the great problems of human freedom and religious 
toleration. 

But it is not in the publications of this society 
alone that the new love of family lore finds expression. 
Private individuals have caught the infection and the 
study of genealogy has become a passion. Every man 
investigates his ancestry and hundreds of pedigrees have 
been printed for private circulation. Some of these are 
works of extraordinary extent and completeness, the 
most remarkable of them all being a history of the 
Whitney family of Connecticut, and the " Wentworth 
Genealogy." The former is probably the most sumptu- 
ous work of the kind ever issued, occupying three quarto 
volumes of a thousand pages each and leaving no wisp 
of the " great cloud of Whitneyses," covering the space 
between 1649 and 1878, unexamined. Dr. Wentworth's 
Genealogy extends over three volumes, of seven hundred 



AMONG THE BERKSHIRE HILLS. 77 

pages each, and has cost no less than forty thousand 
dollars in its compilation. 

The culture of family history in Europe is limited, 
almost entirely, to fixing the inheritance either of 
honourable titles or landed estates, but the genealogist 
of New England knows nothing of the former and, 
since the possession of land confers no distinction 
in America, only incidentally chronicles the latter. 
He has, indeed, a higher aim than to flaunt his titled 
ancestry or " blue blood " in the face of the world. 
The great quartos already alluded to, record the births, 
marriages and deaths of many Wentworths and Whitneys 
who held very humble positions in life and who yet 
illustrated the family virtues by conduct. The fervent 
desire of every New Englander is to trace his lineage to 
one among the handful of God-fearing and courageous 
men who first colonized America. He cares little to po 
back farther than the two hundred and fifty years which 
embrace the history of America, and rarely seeks to 
lengthen his pedigree by research in England, content 
if he has sprung from the virtuous fathers of his own 
country. 

With all this in our minds and on our lips, we 
called next day, after the " high tea " already mentioned, 
to say good-bye to our friend Miss Ruth Whiting. We 
found her at " case," in the newspaper office, m the 
neatest of dresses and most becoming of high aprons, 
and left her laughing gaily at the interest with which 



78 AMONG THE BERKSHIRE HILLS. 

I took the following notes from a volume of the Histoi'ic- 
Genealogical Society s jfonrnal to which she was able to 
refer us. 

The name of Whiting is one of the oldest in New 
England and our fair compositor is easily traced back, 
through steps which might be tedious to recapitulate, to 
the Rev. Sydney Whiting, an English clergyman, who 
married, in 1629, the daughter of Sir Oliver St. John, 
chief justice of the Court of Common Pleas in the time 
of our Commonwealth. Sydney Whiting and his wife 
went to America in 1636, where he became minister of 
Lynn, Massachusetts. His wife was great-granddaughter 
of Oliver St. John, Baron Beauchamp, who, upon the 
coming of his third cousin, Queen Elizabeth, to the 
throne, was created Lord St. John of Bletsoe. Through 
her ancestress, Margaret Beauchamp, grandmother of 
Henry VH., she w^as descended from Gundred, fourth 
daughter of William the Conqueror, who married William 
de Warren, first Earl of Surrey. Through her ancestress 
Joan Plantagenet, who married Gilbert le Clair, Earl of 
Gloucester, and her ancestress Matilda of Scotland, wife 
of Henry I. of England and niece of Edgar Atheling, 
she was descended from Alfred the Great, and through 
her ancestress Maud, wife of William the Conqueror 
and daughter of Baldwin, seventh Count of Flanders, 
she was descended from Lewis the Fair and Charles the 
Bold of France and from Charlemagne, Emperor of ths 
West and Hildegarde of Swabia, his wife. 



AMONG THE BERKSHIRE HILLS. 79 

Next to the honour of entertaining angels unawares, 
must rank that of taking tea with unbeknown princesses, 
and this, it seems, is what happened to us under the 
modest roof of a clerk and compositor in Great Bar- 
rington. 



CHAPTER VI. 

COMMON SCHOOLS — A TOWN MEETING. 

There was no prettier sight in Great Barrington than 
that of the scholars trooping gaily along the streets 
to the common and high schools of the town. This 
crowd of boys and girls, of all ages from five to eighteen, 
white and coloured, clean as new pins and neatly, not 
to say expensively, dressed, gladdened our eyes each 
morning as we sat at breakfast in the Berkshire House. 
Watching it, I began to see that equality is no fiction in 
New England and to understand whence it is born and 
how bred. 

Every child in the town attends either the common 
or high school, according as its studies are more or less 
advanced. Here, boys and girls sit together, learn 
together and play together, and hence, they walk home 
in friendly groups, no one having an opportunity to 
think him or herself better than others. For children 
are born democrats and only become aristocrats by 
education. The words " low " and " hieh " have no 



COMMON SCHOOLS — A TOWN MEETING. 8i 

meaning for little boys and girls and cannot gain one 
in schools where every one receives the same training, 
and all are expected to behave kindly and politely. 

The head-master of the high school made us. 
welcome to sit in his class-room for a couple of hours, 
while the ordinary work of the school was proceeding. 
A mixed class of boys and girls, from fifteen to eighteen 
years of age, were " reciting " a lesson in physics, which 
had previously been learned at home, but the teaching 
of this subject, like that of science in schools generally, 
was machine-like, facts occupying the place of principles, 
and fogginess of mind resulting where illumination 
was sought. The translation of Csesar, which followed, 
was, however, well done, the girls especially shining in 
classics as much as they had proved dull in science. 

Adjourning, after a time, to the common school, 
about whose relation to the high school more hereafter, 
we found a very bright and earnest young lady teach- 
ing geography to a large mixed class of children and 
scarcely knew which to admire most, the lively, interest- 
ing method of teaching, or the strict yet gentle discipline 
of the teacher. Then we listened while a " plant lesson " 
was given, and this exercise, although treated as a 
recreation, was a really scientific bit of work. A 
common groundsel plant, a sheet of paper and a pencil 
was given to every child in the class, and it was then 
explained how the essential parts of a plant consist 
of roots, stems, leaves and flowers ; the functions of 

G 



82 COMMON SCHOOLS — .-/ TOWN MEETING. 

these organs were explained and illustrated on the black 
board, reference being made all the while to the speci- 
mens in the children's hands. Finally, each scholar was 
told to draw a plant diagrammatically on the paper and 
to write down ten words, descriptive of organ or function, 
which had been used by the teacher in the course of 
the lesson. The result was extraordinary. Some stupid 
children, of course, failed to get any ideas at all from 
the exercise, but the great majority succeeded in satis- 
factorily grasping such elementary principles of physio- 
logical botany as it was the teacher's aim to convey. 
The lesson only occupied half an hour, the demonstra- 
tions being very succinct as well as lucid, but more 
real knowledge was conveyed, and the mental powers 
of the children were more strengthened during that 
thirty minutes than if they had committed to memory 
whole pages of a text-book on botany. 

The American theory of free public education is 
summed up in the dictum of Washington, that the 
virtue and intelligence of the people are the two indis- 
pensable securities of republican institutions. " Hence," 
says Horace Mann, "the minimum of education can 
never be less than such as is sufficient to qualify each 
citizen for the civil and social duties he will have to 
discharge ; such an education as teaches the individual 
the great laws of health, as qualifies for the performance 
of parental duties, as is indispensable for the civil 
functions of a witness or juror, as is necessary for a 



COMMON SCHOOLS — A TOWN MEETING. 83 

voter in municipal and national affairs and, finally, as 
is required for the faithful and conscientious discharge 
of all those duties which devolve upon the inheritor 
of a portion of the sovereignty of this great republic." 
For, inasmuch as the sovereignty of the people forms 
the basis of every American institution, each individual 
is a part of the sovereign and participates, equally 
with every other, in the government of the State. 
Further, the individual, in a free country, is the best, as 
he is the only judge of his own interests, and Society 
has no right to direct his actions unless his conduct 
becomes hurtful to her, or until she requires to summon 
him to her aid. It is not wonderful that the general 
recognition of principles such as these should have 
lifted the question of free education to the highest place 
in early colonial days, or that the common school 
system remains one of the capital institutions of the 
United States, 

The " township," a district which may contain one or 
many towns, according as population is dense or sparse, 
forms the political unit throughout New England and 
stands in precisely the same relation to State-Government 
as does the individual to it. By the school law of Massa- 
chusetts, every township is bound to provide, at its own 
expense, a sufficient number of schools for the instruction 
of all its children of school age, in the three R's, the 
geography and history of the United States and the 
practice of good behaviour, to which elementary education 



84 COMMON SCHOOLS — A TOWN MEETING. 

each School Committee may add higher subjects if it 
think fit. These are the common schools. Every town- 
ship, again, having more than five hundred householders, 
must, similarly, provide and maintain a second school, 
where book-keeping, history, natural philosophy, the 
civil policy of America and the Latin language are 
taught ; while, if the township contain four thousand 
inhabitants, Greek, modern languages, advanced natural 
science, rhetoric, logic, moral science and political 
economy must be added to the curriculum already 
defined. These are the high schools. 

The cost of both common and high schools is borne 
by local taxation, supplemented by small grants from 
what is called the State School Fund, whose estab- 
lishment, in 1834, was one of the most important educa- 
tional measures ever adopted by the commonwealth. 
Previously to this time, thanks to the jealousy with 
which Americans guard the principles of local self- 
government, the schools of various townships were very 
much isolated, and no one knew what his neighbour 
was doing. In the consequent absence of wholesome 
emulation, local parsimony cut down the school ap- 
propriations until the public schools seemed in danger 
of becoming pauperized and the faith of the people 
in their value was correspondingly undermined. The 
creation of the State fund, small as it is, has changed 
all this. The grant depends, first, on proper annual 
returns being made to a body called the Educa- 



COMMON SCHOOLS — A TOWN MEETING. 85 

tional Board, and, secondly, on the amount of the 
local appropriations reserved for school purposes. 
Although the power of the township over its schools 
remains absolute, and the State can do no more than 
regard the progress of education with watchful interest, 
a general control has thus been established, which has 
proved most beneficial. All material facts and statistics 
of education are annually made known to the central 
board, through whose agency every township is kept 
acquainted with what its neighbours are doing. New 
ideas, gathered from many quarters, are disseminated 
by its report ; in this way a spirit of emulation between 
township and township has been generated and the 
vivifying influence of intercommunication introduced 
into the previously isolated school system. 

Whatever may be the stimulus afforded by the State 
fund, the main cost of education is, however, borne by 
local taxation. The amount of this differs as widely 
as local ideas of what constitutes an efficient school, but 
generally in New England, the school tax is about one- 
third of the whole local rating. In the case of Great 
Barrington, indeed, it is considerably more than this, 
the school appropriations for 1883 being no less than 
^8500, out of a total taxation of K 19,700. 

The schools are managed by a committee, appointed 
by ballot at the annual " town meeting," of which more 
hereafter. So far as the law is concerned, school attend- 
ance is compulsory throughout New England, but in 



86 COMMON SCHOOLS — A TOWN MEETING. 

America, "the law is powerless when unsupported by 
public sentiment," and both truancy and absenteeism 
arc too common in great cities. It is, nevertheless, good 
evidence of the universality of education in America 
that it is exceedingly cheap. Notwithstanding the large 
appropriations already alluded to, the cost of schooling 
per head is very small. In the high schools, where the 
teaching is suitable for boys who propose to enter either 
the university, the professions, or commerce, the expense 
is about £$ los. per annum ; while in the common 
schools of the principal cities it is £2 los. per annum. 
In rural districts education is cheaper still, costing no 
more than £i ^s. a head in the manufacturing State of 
Massachusetts, and scarcely more than los. per head per 
annum in the agricultural State of Illinois. This is one- 
third the sum which our own Committee of Council allow 
for the education of an English mechanic or labouring 
man. 

" As with the teacher, so with the pupil," is a maxim 
whose truth is fully recognized in America, where there 
are nearly half a million of these public servants con- 
trolling two hundred thousand schools and eight millions 
of scholars. Of their general character, it is not for a 
bird of passage to speak very fully, and I prefer to quote 
the carefully formed opinions of the Rev. Mr. Fraser, who 
reported on American schools to our own Government 
some few years ago. " American teachers," he says, 
" are self-possessed, energetic and fearless, admirable 



COMMON SCHOOLS — A TOWN MEETING. 87 

disciplinarians, firm without severity, patient without 
weakness ; their manner of teaching lively and their 
illustrations fertile. No class could ever fall asleep 
in their hands. They are proud of their position and 
fired with a laudable ambition to maintain the credit 
of the school ; a little too sensitive of blame, and a little 
too greedy of praise, but a very fine and capable body 
of workers in a noble cause." 

In spite of its being poorly paid, the teaching pro- 
fession in America occupies a very high place in popular 
esteem. If the teachers of common schools do not mix 
as freely in the best society as do our masters of great 
public schools, that is because of their slender incomes 
only. The teacher of the humblest district schools, 
on the other hand, occupies a far higher position 
than the teacher of an elementary school in England. 
They live in a cheerful and refined frugality, entertaining 
simply but hospitably, and enjoying a social status 
very much like that of an English clergyman. 

Common and high school life together occupy about 
thirteen years, or from the age of five to eighteen ; but 
there are many children, of course, who never enter the 
high school at all, though their too early absorption into 
the farm or workshop is regretted by most Americans. 
The schools are all graded, the scholars passing by 
a regular series of steps, from the infant, through the 
common into the high school, where the system cul- 
minates. The high school may, or may not, fit its pupils 



88 COMMON SCHOOLS — A TOWN MEETING. 

for the universities, according as the classical course is 
taken or omitted, but it can scarcely be said that there 
is a rung missing in that " ladder from the gutter to 
the university," which the best friends of education in 
England are so anxious to see erected here. 

The sexes are sometimes separated and sometimes 
mixed in the high schools, but are almost always mixed 
in the common schools, and there is some diversity of 
public opinion upon this question in the States. De 
Tocqueville's views on this point are well known, 
and were powerfully expressed. " If I were asked to 
what cause I think the singular prosperity and growing 
power of this people should be attributed, I should 
answer, ' To the superiority of their women,' " and that 
superiority he traced, in great part, to the common 
education of the two sexes. No one can fail to recog- 
nize the force of character and capacity for affairs of 
American women, and there can scarcely be a doubt 
that these qualities are among the fruits of mixed educa- 
tion. Hence, too, the much more business-like relations, 
so to speak, between men and women in the States than 
in Europe. Girls and boys understand one another 
better and appraise each other more justly when edu- 
cated together than when taught apart. The known 
is not necessarily " magnificent " like the " unknown," 
and young men and women who have spent ten or 
twelve years of school life together meet in the world 
of active life, in which women take so large a part in 
the States, without self-consciousness or false modesty. 



COMMON SCHOOLS — A TOWN MEETING. 89 

By the theory of a common school system, scholars 
of every rank are received as equals, and in the 
country districts, especially in such towns as those we 
have already visited, almost everybody is educated in 
the public schools. But in the great cities, wealthy 
people generally send their children to private establish- 
ments, while the artisan, storekeeper, and farmer are in 
possession of the common school. The number of 
academies, however, is comparatively small. There 
is only one of them for every thirteen public schools 
in the State of Massachusetts, where only one child in 
twenty is privately educated. 

Religious freedom reigns just as absolutely as social 
equality in every American public school. It is im- 
plicitly forbidden to teach any form of creed whatsoever, 
and the only religious exercise permitted is the reading 
of the Bible and an opening prayer. Upon this matter, 
as upon that of mixed education, there arc, as may be 
supposed, some differences of opinion among a religious 
and denominational people like the Americans. And it 
is, at first sight, remarkable that secular education should 
prevail throughout a country whose chief corner-stone, 
to use De Tocqueville's words, is the " spirit of religion." 
But the second and only other foundation of the 
national life has been declared by the same authority 
to be "the spirit of liberty," and it is certain that no 
stable institution whatever can be built on these two 
bases if it is to rest at all unequally upon them. The 



90 COMMON SCHOOLS — A TOWN MEETING. 

patriarchs of America were religious in the last degree, 
but they loved their narrow creeds less than freedom. 
Hence, the common school is secular in its character, 
although the men who founded it were enthusiastic 
theologians, and there arc happily, as yet, no signs that 
the fabric of free education in America is likely to be 
inclined either this way by fanaticism or that by licence. 
The object of education in America is not so much 
the production of the learned man, or even the good 
man, as of the good citizen. "Every American citizen," 
says Mr. Fraser, " has to play a part in the great arena 
of public life, which, in other countries, is reserved for 
the governing class or classes. Hence, the extent to 
which the study of the constitution of the United States 
pervades the programme of the schools ; hence, the 
continual appeals to support the system on national 
and patriotic, even more than social and domestic, 
grounds. As for the school itself, it is a microcosm of 
American life. There reigns in it the same freedom 
and equality ; the same rapidity of movement and same 
desire to progress, easily catching at every new idea, 
ever on the watch for improvements ; the same appeals 
to ambition ; the same subordination of the individual to 
the mass ; the same prominence given to utilitarian over 
pursuits of a refining aim ; the same excessive strain on 
the mental and physical powers ; the same feverishness 
and absence of repose." And the results are very 
remarkable. The political intelligence of the people is 



COMMON SCHOOLS — A TOWN MEETING. 91 

extraordinary. Compare the knowledge and mental 
activity displayed by a New England farmer, or mechanic, 
with that possessed and exhibited by an Englishman of 
similar social station, and the contrast would be ludicrous. 
If the benefits of this education are unequally diffused, 
if the richest neighbourhood gets most of them and the 
poorest least ; if the attendance is irregular and the mass 
of untaught large in the great cities; — yet, notwithstand- 
ing these hindrances which beset education everywhere, 
the common school system of America " is contributing 
powerfully to the development of a nation, of which it is 
no flattery or exaggeration to say that it is, if not the 
most highly educated, yet certainly the most generally 
educated and intelligent people on the earth." 

The township, as I have said, is the political unit in 
New England. This is itself an inferior republic, whose 
individual members regulate equally every local interest 
of the community. The legislature of each town is 
composed, like that of Athens, of all the inhabitants, who 
may be present personally at a town meeting which is 
held once in every year. Inhabitancy is obtained either 
by birth, a vote for the town, the consent of the "select 
men" or the holding of office. The town meeting is 
held under the chairmanship of a moderator, chosen for 
the occasion by vote, and its proceedings are recorded 
by the town clerk. When thus lawfully assembled, it 
has power to make all the orders, rules and constitu- 
tions which concern the common welfare of the town 



92 COMMON SCHOOLS — A TOWN MEETING. 

and to determine both the amount and appropriation 
of the local taxation. It elects all the municipal 
officers, from the town clerk to the chimney viewer and 
chooses the select men, who form the executive and 
serve without remuneration. 

These are usually three, and never more than seven 
in number, and it is their business to expend the public 
money in accordance with the appropriations made by 
the town meeting, to see that all the public officers of 
the town perform their duties faithfully and, generally, 
to run the town during their year of office. At the expira- 
tion of that time, they summon the town once more, 
and, having submitted a report of their proceedings, 
hold themselves ready to account to their fellow-citizens 
for all their deeds, whether of commission or omission, 
before laying down their authority. 

It might easily be supposed that the confusion 
usually incident to popular meetings would be unfavour- 
able, if not fatal, to a legislature of this kind, and it 
might, as easily, seem dangerous to entrust the executive 
with such absolute powers as are delegated to the select 
men. The debates of a town meeting often affect the 
interests of the inhabitants as importantly as acts of 
the State legislature, and are generally much more 
closely interwoven wath the public happiness than these. 
Hence, they have been fenced about, and are controlled 
by very exact rules for ensuring strict propriety and are 
under the direction of special officers. No person speaks 



COMMON SCHOOLS — A TOWN MEETING. 93 

without leave. The person who rises first speaks firsts 
and no one interrupts him. Voting is conducted syste- 
matically and with decorum. Any person disturbing 
the order of proceedings is fined and, if the offence is 
flagrant, may be brought before the justices of the peace. 
All the proceedings of these assemblies are matters of 
record and can be re-examined, complained of and 
rectified at any subsequent period. 

But the chief cause of the propriety which reigns on 
these occasions resides, probably, less in regulations, 
however stringent, than in ideas and habits formed in 
the public schools. Be this how it may, a multitude of 
important matters, too numerous and unwieldy to be 
adjusted by the State legislature, are debated and 
arranged in these people's parliaments by the very 
persons who have most interest in and who best under- 
stand them. In these schools men become apprenticed 
to public life and learn how to conduct public business. 
He who would be listened to, however, in a town 
meeting, must only speak when he has something to say 
and then briefly and modestly, rather than ingeniously 
and at length. The habitual contributor, on the other 
hand, of a grain of common sense or ray of illumination 
to the discussions of a New England Agora very soon 
becomes a marked man. Neither age, wealth nor self- 
assertion will be wanted to carry him, sooner or later, 
into public office, which, in this purer municipal life of 
America, every man seeks instead of shirking. As to 



94 COMMON SCHOOLS — A TOWN MEETING. 

the select men, their powers, if enormous, are exercised 
under checks of unusual efficacy. The very smallness 
of the executive body encourages honesty and efficiency 
in no small degree. That a corporation has " no body 
to be kicked and no soul to be damned " is usually 
correct in proportion to its dimensions. No member of 
a committee of three can hide himself behind his fellows 
when the day of reckoning comes, and he stands before 
the assembled town to give an account of his steward- 
ship. 

And what a meeting it is to face ! Farmers and 
artisans, such as those I have attempted to portray, 
form the great majority of its members, but all the store- 
keepers of the town are there as well, the lawyers, who 
are never absent when politics, municipal or other, are 
to the fore, and the clergy, of course, for they, in America, 
have common interests with the laity. A moderator is 
chosen, and then the town officers are appointed, their 
names having, probably, been previously agreed upon 
between the caucuses which direct the action of either 
political party. The report of the school committee is 
read, its year's work detailed, and its claims for a liberal 
appropriation put forward, with the cheerful assurance 
of those who know they have the entire sympathy of 
their audience. Next, the jurors are appointed, and 
after these things have passed smoothly by, the decks 
are cleared for action, the select men's budget, so to 
speak, is introduced and burning questions of taxation 



COMMON SCHOOLS — A TOWN MEETING. 95 

and expenditure are energetically discussed. Lastly 
the accounts for the past year are rendered in the 
utmost detail and scrutinized with impartial severity. 
The Great Barrington triumvirate of 1882, for instance, 
had to explain why Charles Mason got twenty-five cents 
for taking down a certain image, and Edward Humphry 
six dollars for the care of tramps. David McGraw, 
again, had been paid H285 for his partial support during 
the year, while the average cost of other poor people 
had only been nine dollars a head, and these abnormal 
expenditures were all duly accounted for. 

But it is over appropriations for highways and 
bridges that the sharpest engagements generally take 
place. Then, sometimes, the storekeepers and farmers 
take opposite sides upon questions of proposed improve- 
ments, which seem to confer unequal benefits upon 
town and country. When this is the case, there follow 
debates, often adjourned from day to day, and dis- 
tinguished by all the sagacity, logical power and incisive 
modes of expression which characterize the New 
Englander. The scene, under these circumstances, is 
frequently exciting, and always interesting, especially 
to strangers. An Englishman, shutting his ears, might 
think himself in a meeting of his fellow-countrymen, 
mechanics in their Sunday clothes, with a few genuine 
Yankee faces scattered here and there. But the same 
observer, with his ears open, would receive very different 
impressions. He would hear questions of considerable 



96 COMMON SCHOOLS — A TOWN MEETING. 

local importance discussed earnestly, briefly and sensibl}-, 
although in the simplest and, sometimes, in the most 
primitive terms ; while, if the village Hampdens, to whom 
he listens, are as provincial in their appearance as in 
their language, they, none the less, behave like men con- 
scious of their responsibilities and accustomed equally 
to claim the rights, or abide the restrictions of public 
speech. Such is a New England town meeting, the 
purest democratic institution now existing in the world. 
It was fathered by men whose heart of hearts spoke in 
proclaiming the equality of man and the sovereignty 
of the people, and the heads of these patriarchs were in 
the right place, equally with their hearts, when they 
made the common school a training-ground for their 
Agora. 

I am fully aware that this picture of municipal life 
in New England differs, toto caio, not only from English 
ideals of local self-government in America, but also from 
the flagrantly corrupt models which stand for its portrait 
in too many cities of the United States. But political 
degradation in America is only another name for the 
abstinence of her best men from public duties and their 
too great devotion to private interests. That nothing 
can be worse than many city governments in America, 
no one will deny ; yet, as the case of Philadelphia proves, 
the evil is curable if only the real leaders of society will 
lead. A few years ago, Philadelphia was the worst 
governed city in the Union. Its "ring "was abler but 



COMMON SCHOOLS — A TOWN MEETING. 97 

even more unscrupulous than were the rascals who, 
under Tweed's leadership, robbed New York, while the 
fact that it consisted of persons who were ostensibly- 
respectable, instead of open ruffians, only made the case 
more difficult to deal with. At the time when these 
men were at the height of their power, the municipal 
government was corrupt from the crown of its head to 
the sole of its foot, while the ring was strong enough to 
defy the efforts of the few who strove to bring about a 
better state of things. 

At length, the crying needs of the situation them- 
selves gave rise to an organization called the " Citizens 
Committee of One Hundred," which was formed in 1880. 
This was composed of business men, whose names 
were known to the whole city for their honourable 
connection with leading mercantile houses. Not a 
single member was a politician or an aspirant for office. 
Their objects were to maintain the purity of the ballot, 
to secure the nomination and election of a better class 
of candidates for office, to prosecute the misappropriators 
of public funds, and to promote a public service based 
upon character and capability only. Their methods 
were simple and direct in the last degree. They 
addressed circulars to every voter, giving, in the plainest 
language, reasons for opposing this candidate and 
supporting that. Avoiding all general statements, they 
brought specific charges against each city department 
which they assailed. They avoided meddling with 

H 



98 COMMON SCHOOLS — A TOWN MEETING. 

State or national politics altogether, only asking the 
voters' aid to reform abuses in the municipality. They 
formulated a well-considered plan for reorganizing the 
city government, put it into the form of a bill to go 
before the State legislature, and pledged legislative 
candidates to its support. They offered substantial 
money rewards for information leading to the arrest and 
punishment of persons guilty of violating the election 
laws, and by thus terrorizing ballot-box stuffers and 
personators, made honest elections possible. Finally, 
they laid before every voter a clear and simple state- 
ment of the cost of good and bad government, showing 
him, whether a great householder or a mere lodger, how 
many dollars per annum he personally paid for corrup- 
tion in the shape of enhanced taxation. 

In the space of three years, the Philadelphia Com- 
mittee of One Hundred has utterly destroyed the power 
of the ring and restored the municipal government of 
the city, if not to the purity of the New England Agora, 
then to that high condition which will become general 
in the States only when the natural leaders of society 
seek instead of shirking their public duties. 



CHAPTER VII. 

PITTSFIELD — DALTON — AN INDUSTRIAL PIONEER. 

Still following the valley of the Housatonic, we found 
ourselves next at Pittsfield, another pretty Berkshire 
town, of twelve thousand inhabitants, lying in a noble 
expansion between the Taconic and Green Mountain 
ranges. Here, two branches of the river unite, but their 
diminished volume evidences that we are now near the 
head-waters of the stream which we have followed so 
far. We have risen nearly twelve hundred feet since 
beginning our journey, and have now reached a plateau 
whence the surrounding mountains lose much of their 
grandeur, and give graceful rather than sublime outlines 
to the landscape. 

We had already noticed in several towns that the 
fashion of surrounding private houses with boundary 
walls and fences is apparently passing away in New 
England, and this revolution has been actually accom- 
plished in the best residential streets of Pittsfield. 
Their villa-like dwellings are set back some distance 



loo AN INDUSTRIAL PIONEER. 

from the roadway, and occupy a lawn, which is common 
to them all. This is tastefully planted with ornamental 
trees, and extends backwards from the road for a con- 
siderable distance, dying out in the open country beyond. 
The public footway, or sidewalk, runs, like a garden- 
path, through the sward, and is profusely shaded with 
maples. Nothing can be prettier than the general effect 
of this arrangement, which gives the idea of a large 
community of friendly homes, scattered over the surface 
of a wooded park, while trim figures and bright dresses, 
moving hither and thither among the trees, or grouped 
here and there on the grass, lend a Watteau-like air to 
the picture. 

The greater exposure of the house to the public view 
under this system is producing an excellent effect on 
domestic architecture in New England. Tasteful dwell- 
ings are becoming common where, only a few years ago, 
nothing was to be seen better than the plain or 
pretentious wooden structures which the fashion of the 
moment favoured. Fashion in house architecture has 
changed so often in America, that it is easy to re- 
cognize a succession of styles, extending from colonial 
times to the present day. In the former period, for 
example, the houses of the wealthy were universally 
large square buildings, having many windows, an ample 
columned portico, a wide front door with a shell- 
shaped fanlight above, and moderately sloping roofs. 
Afterwards, came a sham classic style, lasting from about 



AN INDUSTRIAL PIONEER. loi 

1810 to 1820, when the plain citizen tried to make his 
house look as much like the Parthenon as was possible 
with pine boards. Later still, the Gothic carpenter was 
let loose in New England, and he, between 1845 and 
1855, tacked crude tracery or sham arches of plank to 
the windows and gables of every new building. This 
style is one of the least happy efforts of the American 
architect. Between 1855 and 1865, a curious rage set in 
for a box-like house, with a flat, sheet-iron roof, over- 
hanging like a lid, which, if duly provided with hinges, 
would prove a capital arrangement for any American 
Devil on Two Sticks. This fashion gave way, about 
1865, to an Italian villa style, distinguished by broken 
surfaces, many roofs, and wide-eaved towers, recalling 
memories of the Riviera in the prosaic streets of New 
England. There followed, in 1870, a French house, 
with mansard roofs, dormer windows and a profusion of 
surface ornament, which kept the floor until, finally, 
our own Queen Anne has won all hearts. The last 
change appears to have resulted from the pretty build- 
ings erected for the English Commissioners at the 
Centennial Exhibition and, as the new style has been 
cleverly used and is, structurally, very suitable to wood, 
of which so many houses are built in the States, it has 
probably a long and prosperous life before it 

Passing through one of the broadest and shadiest 
streets in Pittsfield, bordered for the most part with 
courtly looking old colonial houses, we were shown one 



I02 AN INDUSTRIAL PIONEER. 

which was long the residence of Mr. Appleton, of 
Boston, and the home where Longfellow found his wife. 
Here, on the landing of a broad, old-fashioned stair- 
case, stood the " Old Clock on the Stairs," whose 
philosophic pendulum still ticks a perpetual " For ever 
— never," to listening life and death, sorrow and mirth, 
in the poet's song, a song which well describes the kind 
of house I have tried to picture as typical of the old 
colonial times — 

" Somewhat back from the village street 
Stands the old-fashioned country seat, 
Across its antique portico 
Tall poplar trees their shadows throw, 
And from its station in the hall 
An ancient time-piece says to all — 

For ever — never ! 

Never — for ever ! " 

There is another house in Pittsfield having a con- 
nection of considerable interest with one of the stirring- 
episodes of the Revolutionary War. We have already 
seen that the Berkshire folk were, for the most part, 
enthusiasts on behalf of national independence and 
that the county militia was prompt in its aid of the cause. 
Colonel James Easton, the commander of this corps, 
was landlord of a quaint old gambrel-roofed tavern, 
standing in one of the shadiest streets of Pittsfield, in 
the year 1775. Here, on the evening of a wild May-day 
in that year, came Edward Mott, with a band of sixteen 



AN INDUSTRIAL PIONEER. 103 

Connecticut men, charged by the legislature of this State 
to attempt the conquest of Fort Ticonderoga, the key 
of North America, then safely resting in the pocket of 
Britain. The wind roared in the wide chimney and the 
rain dashed in torrents on the lattices of the retired 
room in which Mott and Easton, with five or six other 
bold Berkshiremen, held midnight council together, 
shaping the form of this daring expedition. 

Before dawn of the next morning, these leaders had 
crossed the Taconic range and were joined in the 
romantic Hancock valley — first, by some twenty-four 
men, under the command of Captain Douglas and 
afterwards, by two other small parties at Williamstown, 
all moving under the cover of night. Then began the 
northward march into Vermont, where the whole expe- 
dition was placed under command of the dare-devil 
Ethan Allen, of New Hampshire fame. He reached 
the ferry at Ticonderoga on the evening of the ninth, 
and succeeded in landing eighty men on the opposite 
shore during the night. At the head of these he 
marched to the fort, and, having surprised the sentry, 
paraded his men within, and then proceeded to Captain 
Laplace's bedchamber and demanded a surrender. "By 
whose authority ? " exclaimed the bewildered com- 
mandant, who knew of no enemy with whom Great 
Britain was at war. " In the name of the Great Jehovah, 
and the Continental Congress," rejoined Allen, his drawn 
sword pointed at Laplace's unguarded breast. The sur- 



I04 AN INDUSTRIAL PIONEER. 

prise was complete and Ticonderoga, with its garrison 
and stores, surrendered to the Americans. 

It was not, however, to recall such events of the 
Revolutionary War as are connected with the town of 
Pittsfield that we had travelled to the foot of the Grey- 
lock range. Our object was to visit the home and mills 
of Mr. Zenas Crane, the son of another Zenas Crane, 
who was the pioneer of paper-making in Western 
Massachusetts. 

There were very few manufacturers of any kind 
settled between the Hudson and Connecticut Rivers at 
the beginning of this century. In the year 1799, how- 
ever, a young paper-maker, named Crane, started from 
his brother's factory, in Eastern Massachusetts, to pros- 
pect for a site on which to establish himself inde- 
pendently in business. Setting out, as usual in those 
days, on horseback, he rode up through the Connecticut 
valley, passing by its magnificent water-powers as too 
vast, and the rapid streams of the Eastern Hoosac slopes 
as too unruly, for his modest purposes. At length, 
crossing the Hoosac range, our industrial knight-errant 
found, in the valley of the upper Housatonic, a locality 
exactly suited to his ideas and so, finally, halted at 
Dalton, then an agricultural village of nine hundred 
inhabitants, about four miles from Pittsfield. Here, not 
only was the water-power ample, but easily controlled 
and, what was still more important to a paper-maker, 
extremely pure. 



AN INDUSTRIAL PIONEER. 105 

Dalton itself is situated almost in the centre of Berk- 
shire, a county then containing some thirty-five thou- 
sand inhabitants ; while Albany, the capital of New York 
State, is only thirty miles away. The combination of 
suitable water-power with a fairly dense population, from 
whom rags might be procured and to whom paper 
might be sold, determined Crane's choice of the locality, 
and, two years later, his first little mill was ready for 
work. 

We accordingly find in \ki& Pitts field Sun of February 
10, 1 80 1, the following quaint advertisement, one of a 
kind often occurring in the newspapers of that day, 
wherever attempts were being made to establish native 
American manufactures : — 

AMERICANS ! 

Encourage your own Manufactories, and they will Improve. 

Ladies, save your RAGS ! 
As the Subscribers have it in contemplation to erect a PAPER 
MILL in Dalton, the ensuing Spring, and the business being very 
beneficial to the community at large, they flatter themselves that 
they shall meet with due encouragement, and that every woman 
who has the good of her country and the interests of her own 
family at large will patronize them, by saving her rags, and sending 
them to their Manufactory, or to the nearest Storekeeper, for which 
Subscribers will give a generous price. 

Henry Wiswell, 
Zenas Crane, 
John Willard. 
Worcester, Feb. 8th, 1801. 

Rags, at this time, formed the only raw material for 



io6 AN INDUSTRIAL PIONEER. 

paper-making and home-made linen was the universal 
wear. This, unlike the cotton cloth of to-day, lasted for 
many years, but what little waste there was went always 
into the family rag-bag. There it accumulated for a 
long time, Pattison, the tin-man, not having yet created 
the wandering tin-pedlar and the means of communica- 
tion being very limited. 

At the time when Zenas Crane's advertisement first 
appeared, there were only seven post-ofifices in Berkshire 
county, and no provision for the distribution of the 
mails from these centres. People sent for such letters as 
they expected, until, after a time, some enterprising men 
undertook the business of " post-riders," carrying the 
mails, each over a given district, and delivering them 
from door to door. Scarcely was this system started, 
than the newspapers took advantage of it to widen their 
circulation, and the post - riders, indeed, very soon 
became pedlars in a small way. The Pittsfield Stm thus 
reached many a housewife living remote from the mill, 
and she soon began to exchange her rags with the rider 
for some trifling household commodities. In this way, 
all the early paper-mills were supplied with their raw 
material for many years. 

"The Old Berkshire," or Pioneer Mill, was a small 
two-storied building, whose upper floor was used as a 
drying loft. Below, was a single " vat," and enough of 
the simple apparatus used in producing hand-made 
paper to turn out about a hundred pounds of finished 



AN INDUSTRIAL PIONEER. 107 

work daily. Writing and printing papers were both 
made, but, chlorine being then unknown, rags were 
bleached by exposure only, and every batch of paper 
had its own tint, as one may still remark in turning over 
a file of very old newspapers. 

The first attempts of the Frenchman Didot to produce 
paper by machinery in the form of an endless web were 
made in the same year that saw Zenas Crane's settle- 
ment on the Housatonic, but many years elapsed before 
his " Fourdrinier " machine, as it is called, took a practical 
shape. The old Berkshire mill, indeed, made paper by 
hand for thirty years after its first establishment, but a 
cylinder machine was put in about 1 831, to be followed, 
twenty years later, by the Fourdrinier apparatus. 

The number of hands employed in the early days 
of Crane's enterprise was seven, viz. an engine-man, a 
vat-man, a coucher, all skilled operatives, earning wages 
of fourteen shillings a week, a lay-boy, who received 
half-a-crown a week and his board, and one labourer 
and two girls, at three shillings a week each and 
board. Mr. Crane was himself superintendent, and was 
allowed by his partners to draw thirty-six shillings a 
week. 

Such was manufacturing enterprise and such, small 
as they now seem, were wages at the beginning of this 
century in Massachusetts. The life of the mill was as 
simple as that of the fields, and the relations between 
employer and employed those of cordial equality. The 



io8 AN INDUSTRIAL PIONEER. 

mill-owner, indeed, was only a more capable and perhaps, 
more self-denying man than his fellow-journeymen, while 
both being equally the children of liberty and a common 
education, the first courses of the manufacturing system, 
now of such vast extent in New England, were raised 
upon the same democratic foundations as those of the 
national life. We shall see hereafter what a different 
state of things prevailed in Europe at the time when its 
domestic industries gave way to the factory system, and 
how different was the origin of the latter institution in 
Europe and America. Hitherto, indeed, our journey 
has only added proof to proof that the relations be- 
tween capital and labour in Western Massachusetts are 
still based upon mutual respect and consideration, as 
in the early days of the old Berkshire mill. Business 
has expanded, profits have increased and wages risen 
enormously since the settlement of Zenas Crane on the 
Upper Housatonic ; but master and men are on pretty 
much the same terms now as they were then, throughout 
this home of native American labour. 

Dalton, like Winsted, is a temperance town, and has, 
consequently, the same air of prosperity and order as 
characterizes every place in New England where the sale 
of alcoholic liquors has been made illegal by the act 
of the people. Here, the descendants of the pioneer 
paper-maker live in a style that has something almost 
patriarchal about it, the respective homes of father and 
sons being scattered about a wide, park-like property, 



AN INDUSTRIAL PIONEER. 109 

all within hail of each other. The mill-stream has been 
artistically manipulated, so as to diversify the pretty 
wooded grounds with artificial lakes and cascades, while 
the opportunities afforded by bold natural slopes of the 
ground have been turned to good account by the 
gardener of the family. 

Setting aside the brown stone uniformities which 
give the fashionable streets of New York their air of 
deadly dulness, there are two points which impress an 
Englishman favourably with American houses. They 
are almost always built of wood, a material which is 
very susceptible of artistic treatment, and they are always 
surrounded by wide, shady verandahs, which are simply 
delightful institutions. These are raised a few feet from 
the ground and, being furnished with rocking chairs, 
occasional tables and vases of flowers, make the 
pleasantest summer lounges imaginable. In the 
verandah one seems, indeed, to be within the house 
before the front door is open, while this, again, in the 
absence of passages, admits the visitors at once into 
the heart of the home. 

The New Englander is fond of panelled rooms and 
parquet floors, to which the native woods lend themselves 
with charming effect and, being usually a European 
traveller, he picks up a good many pretty things, both 
meubles and bric-a-brac, in his rambles. Houses are 
always warmed without fires, by means of steam- 
heated radiators. These are shallow metal boxes, about 



no AN INDUSTRIAL PIONEER. 

a yard square, fed with steam from a boiler in the base- 
ment. One or more of them, according to the size of 
the apartment, is placed behind the wainscot, or under 
the floor of every room and landing, and covered with 
a sliding grill for regulating the temperature. The 
dwelling is thus kept evenly warm throughout ; but 
the system provides imperfectly for ventilation, and is 
showing signs of giving way before a thoroughly scien- 
tific plan for supplying warmed fresh air, now being 
introduced into some school-houses and factories. 

Life is agreeably simple and unconventional in New 
England. Early rising is the rule, and breakfast at eight, 
dinner at one, and " supper " at six, the programme of 
meals. These are all unpretentious in character and, 
dinner especially, short in duration. Men eat to live, 
instead of living to eat, and the cuisine, even when 
most refined, plays only a minor part in hospitality. 
I suppose there is scarcely a family in all New England 
where wine or beer is habitually taken, either with or 
between meals. Men are half ashamed to drink and 
women think themselves disgraced by it. But wine 
is kept in the house, as we found, even in sober Dalton, 
where it was quite funny to see our kind host, seeking 
private occasions to gratify my English tastes without 
indecorum. Books are many and talk plenty in these 
pleasant homes, and the latter, if sometimes solid, is often 
very bright and never prejudiced when it is a question 
of new ideas. " Do tell ! " is a phrase always very near 



AN INDUSTRIAL PIONEER. m 

New England lips, but it represents intellectual activity 
rather than idle curiosity. 

A well-to-do New England man prides himself 
probably less on his house than his " barn," which is no 
storehouse for crops, but only a stable. Every one owns 
a buggy and team, and men of moderate wealth keep 
many horses and drive a great variety of carriages. 
Among these there is always included a prettily deco- 
rated sleigh, for there are three months' snow every year 
in towns of even less elevation than Dalton. The barn 
itself is like a great house, specialized for the accommo- 
dation of horses and carriages. It has doors, sashes, 
fittings, a gas and water supply, like those of a dwelling, 
and it is warmed in the same way by radiators. The 
stalls, instead of forming integral parts of the building, 
are independent structures, sheltered, so to speak, by the 
barn and fitted with labour-saving appliances, for the 
supply of food and the removal of manure. The men 
room in a good house, also part of the building, while 
the great carriage-room, as it must be called rather than 
coach-house, is usually decorated with spirited pictures 
of horses and teams. 

Our host's house elbows the paper-mill, on our way 
to which we passed the works' library. This is a pretty 
Queen Anne building, handsomely furnished, and con- 
taining several thousand volumes. Its upper floor 
serves for a news and smoking room, while below are 
the readers. The librarian is one of the mill operatives, 



112 AN INDUSTRIAL PIONEER. 

a born bibliophile and a very intelligent man, whom, 
indeed, I at first mistook for a minister or a school- 
master. Regarding him, the well-dressed readers and 
the half-luxurious room, one might easily think one's self 
in some quiet literary club. The habit, common to 
all American operatives, of washing and dressing after 
the work of the day is done, gives an air of cleanliness 
to such rooms as these, and a respectability to their 
occupants which makes it difficult for an English visitor 
to realize their operative character. 

Free libraries are almost as widely spread as schools 
in New England. There are nearly two thousand of 
them, or one to every eight hundred inhabitants, in the 
State of Massachusetts, and a hundred and nine, or one 
to every six hundred and twenty people, in this county 
of Berkshire. At Pittsfield, we found a library of seven- 
teen thousand volumes, magnificently housed in marble, 
and cared for by a staff fully worthy of its splendid 
charge. At Waterbury, again, we passed without remark, 
but not without examination, the " Bronson Library," 
containing nearly thirty thousand volumes and presided 
over by a most accomplished librarian. Most of these 
institutions originate in private munificence, which 
the town meeting is generally ready to supplement 
liberally, even when prepared to fight "to the bitter end" 
against some highway or bridge rate. 

Thus the Berkshire Athenaeum, at Pittsfield, to which 
reference has already been made, was the gift of a towns- 



AN INDUSTRIAL PIONEER. 113 

man to the town, while the Waterbury library had a 
similar origin. Silas Bronson, born at Waterbury in 
17S8, was a farmer, and the son of a farmer, but being 
of an enterprising disposition, he went South when young, 
became a merchant and a rich man, dying in New 
York at eighty years of age. Always mindful of his 
native town, which owed him, living, many benefits, his 
will contained a bequest of ^50,000, for the founding of 
a library at Waterbury, " and for the sake of promoting 
the education and intelligence of this city, in whose 
well-being I feel great interest, and to encourage and 
maintain therein that good order and those sound 
morals which I deem largely dependent on intellectual 
and moral culture." 

Sentiments like these meet us at every turn in New 
England and are supported by a practice as liberal as 
the sentiments themselves. Hence, in a great measure, 
the wonderful fact that there is only one in every twelve 
hundred persons born in Massachusetts who is unable 
to read and write, while four Germans and Scotch, six 
English, twenty French Canadians, twenty-eight Irish, 
and thirty-four Italians, out of every hundred immi- 
grants of these nationalities respectively are illiterates. 

But the factory doors are open, a stream of black- 
coated men and spruce girls is flowing back from dinner 
to work, and, when in a mill, it is perhaps as well to 
see what the mill does. Paper, as every one knows, is 
made of pulped vegetable fibres, which, before the days 

I 



114 AN INDUSTRIAL PIONEER. 

of machinery, were dipped from a vat by means of 
shallow frames, covered, like a sieve, with woven wire. 
The mould, when filled, was skilfully manipulated until 
the film of pulp was spread evenly over it, being shaken 
at the same time to facilitate the escape of the water. 
The size of the mould determined the size of the sheets, 
and these were removed, or " laid," each on a sheet of 
felt and piled in a regular heap. When six quires, or a 
" post," had accumulated, the pile was put into a screw 
press, which squeezed out much water and gave cohesion 
to the paper. The sheets were afterwards separated, 
pressed a second time, sized and dried in a loft, packed 
and sent to market. 

The Fourdrinier machine, already alluded to, revolu- 
tionized paper-making, by accomplishing processes, which 
under the old system occupied three weeks, in as many 
minutes. The pulp from the rag-engine is received 
in a large vat, furnished with a mechanical stirrer which 
prevents subsidence. From the vat, it flows through a 
cock, whose opening determines the thickness of the 
paper, into a long trough, where it meets with a quantity 
of water coming from a source to be presently described. 
Thence it passes into a vibrating strainer, equally long 
with the trough, through which the finest pulp only 
passes, while knots and foreign substances are retained 
by gratings, as if by a shaking sieve. The fine pulp 
flows from the strainer in a wide, thin stream and is 
caught upon an endless web of gauze wire, which is 



AN INDUSTRIAL PIONEER. 11$ 

kept slowly travelling forwards, while it receives a slight, 
but rapid lateral shaking. This facilitates the escape 
of the water from, and the felting of the fibres themselves, 
while the liquid which passes through the wire gauze, 
being itself charged with the very finest pulp, is caught 
and returned to the trough, already described. 

The edges of the paper are formed by two endless 
indiarubber bands placed above, but travelling with 
the wire cloth, and pressing slightly upon it, so as to 
prevent lateral spreading of the layer of pulp. This 
becomes gradually, but visibly, drier and more co- 
hesive with every foot of its advance, until the gauze 
web presently traverses the mouth of a vacuum 
chamber, from which the air is constantly being 
pumped. The film is thus sucked, as if by magic, 
almost dry, while its fibres are rendered cohesive 
enough to allow of the sheet being picked up by the 
" wet-rolls," one of which is covered with blanket for 
this purpose. These rolls give a slight pressure to the 
pulp film, but are kept wet to prevent its adhesion 
to the blanket. The newly formed paper now co- 
heres sufficiently to allow of its unsupported delivery 
by the wet rolls to the " press-rolls " — a pair of solid, 
smoothly turned iron cylinders of great weight, adjust- 
able by screws. Most of the water is here squeezed 
out of the sheet, which now passes through a second 
pair of press-rolls, and then over a series of steam-heated 
"drying-rolls." Thence, it issues, a continuous roll of 



Ii6 AN INDUSTRIAL PIONEER. 

paper, at the rate of from thirty to fifty feet a minute, 
or a thousand yards in a day of twenty-four hours. Of 
the way in which this paper is sized, cut, sorted and 
packed, it might perhaps be tedious to speak ; suffice 
it if this description enables the fancy of readers, 
not technically educated, to accompany the sheet now 
before their eyes on the journey it once made from the 
pulp-vat to the drying cylinder, through a train of 
machinery as beautiful as any that has ever been 
devised by the mechanic. 

The mills at Dalton are closely surrounded by a 
number of pretty white wooden houses, each standing 
in its own half-acre plot of land. These have all been 
built for their hands by the Cranes and, when not 
owned by their inmates, are let at something like six 
per cent, rents. Near them, and forming part of the 
mill grounds, a little park has been laid out, having 
shady walks, rustic seats, and appliances for out- 
door sports. If Mr. Crane and his sons, representing 
capital, look down upon this home of labour, that is only 
because of their own higher perch on the hill, for the 
descendants of the pioneer are as much the children of 
equality as their ancestor, and prefer to live among their 
own people. This, perhaps, is how it came about that 
our host one afternoon invited us to join him in a 
friendly visit to a sick operative, who, as he said, "might 
enjoy a chat with new-comers." 

Once again, accordingly, we found ourselves under 



AN INDUSTRIAL PIONEER. 117 

a roof similar to those which had already received us 
at Waterbury and Great Harrington, and if we cheered 
the invalid, his bright home and sensible tongue certainly 
delighted us. " Have you been able to get out, John ? " 
said our host, as we took up our hats to go. " Why, no, 
Mr. Zenas ; I haven't felt like walking, although this 
spring air seems to be calling me outside all the time." 
" Could you manage a little drive if I sent the buggy 
down for you ? The afternoon is warm and sunny yet." 
" It would tempt me to make an effort, and I thank you 
very much," was the unembarrassed answer to a question 
most simply, not to say casually, put. Half an hour 
afterwards, Jim, the free-spoken, liveryless, but excellent 
coachman, was at John New's door, with as good a 
team as the barn held, hitched into the same buggy 
that had brought us from Pittsfield to pretty, peaceful 
Dalton. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

A SHAKER VILLAGE — COMMUNISM. 

We started, a party of four, in the buggy of a Pittsfield 
friend, one delicious May morning, when spring at last 
seemed come, to cross the Taconic range and visit the 
Communistic Shaker Society at Mount Lebanon. Two 
mountain roads traverse the hills between Pittsfield and 
Lebanon Springs, where there are mineral springs very 
near the Shaker settlement, much frequented by New 
England valetudinarians. These steep rough tracks are 
hewn through the mantle of birches which clothes the 
range, fringed with a thick undergrowth of pine and 
raspberries, and gemmed just now with the white 
blossoms of the Alpine strawberry. Reaching the 
summit, after a charming climb, we gained a glorious 
view of the Catskills, whose serrated profile of faintest 
blue was scarcely relieved on the bluer sky, while, from 
our feet, the ground sloped gently down, in a succession 
of grassy slopes, traveled by minor ranges of hills, to 
the wide valley of the unseen Hudson. 



A SHAKER VILLAGE — COMMUNISM. 119 

The Taconics form the boundary line between New 
York and Massachusetts, but the former State originally 
claimed the Connecticut River for her eastern border, and 
the dividing line between these two provinces was long 
the subject of bitter controversy. But while the Dutch 
settlers of New York, less adventurous farmers than 
traders, were peopling the banks of the Hudson, they 
neglected to extend eastward of the Taconic mountains, 
so that the more enterprising New Englanders, obtain- 
ing possession by occupancy, eventually established a 
right to this portion of the disputed territory. They 
pushed, indeed, over the range itself, and, in the attempt 
to occupy its western flanks, gave occasion for a quarrel 
which lasted many years and in the course of which 
blood was shed more than once. The feud was, how- 
ever, terminated in 1773 by a mutual agreement that 
the line should be fixed twenty miles east of the 
Hudson, where it is practically coincident with the 
ridge of the Taconics. One still observes that the towns 
upon the river are generally distinguished by Dutch 
names, such as Staatsburg, Crugers, or Verplank, while 
almost every place between the river and the boundary 
line was christened in English by the early New Eng- 
land settlers. 

No Englishman will ever forget his first glimpse of 
the Lebanon valley. Descending the mountain road — 

" You stand suddenly astonished ; 
You are gladdened unaware ; " 



I20 A SHAKER VILLAGE — COMMUNLSM. 

as a landscape is gradually disclosed which thrills the 
English traveller with suggestions of home. The 
ground has the same gentle curves, and rises, here and 
there, to the same modest heights as that of a midland 
shire. There are the same smooth, green fields and trim 
fences, while clumps of birch and pine, scattered about 
the hill-slopes, recall many a well-known copse and 
spinney. The very farmhouses are more irregularly dis- 
posed, the orchards more systematically planted than is 
usual in America, while distant villages nestle among 
the trees, just as they do in Kent. 

Presently, threading one of these, we found hard, 
smooth roads under our wheels, spotless houses, with a 
broom hanging at every door, on either hand, and such 
villagers as were not a-field sweeping or picking up 
straws from the highway, which was as clean as a plate. 
At length we reached Mount Lebanon, the parent and 
principal Shaker settlement in America, founded in 1787, 
and, at present, presided over by Elder Frederick Evans, 
the chief living representative of Shaker theology and 
polity. 

The first thing to strike a visitor is the extraordinary 
cleanliness of the roads and houses, and the extreme 
neatness and perfection of the cultivation, whether of 
fields or orchards. His attention is next claimed by the 
immense size of the Shaker dwellings, plain, barrack- 
like buildings of wood, painted white, each capable of 
accommodating nearly a hundred persons. Lastly, he 



A SHAKER VILLAGE — COMMUNIS AT. 121 

becomes conscious of a profound and, so to say, sabbatical 
calm, which enfolds the settlement like an atmosphere 
and lends an air of worship to everyday life and work. 

Each of the great barrack-like buildings contains a 
commune, or family of from thirty to eighty members, 
consisting of men and women, with such children as may 
have been apprenticed to the society. There are seven 
such communes at Lebanon and, of these, the North 
Family, so called from its position, is the largest. The 
North House has four bedroom stories, each sleeping- 
chamber accommodating from four to eight persons and 
containing as many beds as it has occupants, wash- 
stands, a writing-table, chairs, and a stove for warming in 
winter. Near the last, is a wood basket and, hanging above 
this, are the fire-irons, a dustpan and brush and a small 
broom, aside from which the walls of the apartment are 
quite bare. The floor is adorned with strips of a pretty 
carpet, of home make and sober colour, while a mat of 
similar material lies before every door in the house. 
These are never fastened down, and are removed daily, 
for the purpose of sweeping. Everything is in such 
perfect order and kept so delicately clean that an air of 
refinement, not to say luxury, seems to pervade these 
bedchambers, in spite of their absolute simplicity. A 
wide hall separates the dormitories of the men from 
those of the women, but the same description applies, 
whether to the " sisters' " or " brothers' " apartments. On 
the ground floor, are the kitchen, pantry, storerooms and 



122 A SHAKER VILLAGE — COMMUNISM. 

common dining-hall, distinguished like the bedrooms 
by perfect simpHcity and absolute cleanliness. 

Besides these great caravanserais, Mount Lebanon 
contains a large meeting-house for public worship, stores 
for the supply of commodities, an immense barn belong- 
ing to the North Family, the sisters' or women's workshop, 
the men's or brothers' workshop, in each of which various 
industries are carried on, an enormous woodshed, a 
house for the accommodation of visitors and applicants 
for admission into the society, a great laundry, a saw- 
mill, grist-mill and the herb- or extract-house. 

The Shakers, unlike some other communistic societies 
in America, prefer agriculture before manufacture. They 
have, indeed, given the latter a trial more than once, but 
find the simple labours and habits of a farming people 
necessary to the communal life. They cling, however, 
to one industry, for which they enjoy a very high reputa- 
tation — namely, the preparation of drugs from vegetable 
extracts. But the herb-house, if fitted with a steam- 
engine, evaporating pans and presses, has nothing of the 
factory about it. " Brother Alonzo " is the one and only 
operative in this fragrant workshop, and he is a study. 
Very tall, thin and pale, having a high forehead fringed 
with grey hair, which falls low on his shoulders behind, 
and a face like one of Perugino's saints, he greeted us 
with a sweet little smile, and showed us his premises and 
processes with a soft, simple politeness that seemed 
hardly of this world. Alonzo Hollister would have been 



A SHAKER VILLAGE — COMMUNISM. 123 

a monk In the Middle Ages and might have sat to Fra 
Angelico for his most beatific faces. It seemed fitting, 
in view of the Sunday-hke air already alluded to as 
characteristic of Lebanon, that such a man should be 
the first Shaker we met. Looking into his face and 
listening to his conversation, we found no difficulty in 
realizing that religious communism may have the same 
attractions for some sweet, sincere and spiritually 
minded men to-day as the monastery, whether of the 
third century or of the Middle Ages, had for similar 
characters in the past. 

Leaving the extract-house, we met Elder Evans, with 
whom one of our party was well acquainted, and in his 
company we visited — first, the great barn and then the 
house of the North Family, which has already been de- 
scribed. Frederick Evans is an Englishman by birth, 
and was once a labouring lad on a Worcestershire farm. 
He came to the United States when only twelve years 
old and, after trying life in several socialistic communi- 
ties, joined the Shakers nearly fifty-five years ago. 
Although without conventional education, he is a 
well-informed man, who talks absolute common sense 
about every subject except religion, and impresses a new 
acquaintance with a powerful character, great natural 
ability and a strikingly handsome person. 

The great barn is quite a notable sight. This large 
building, nearly three hundred feet long and fifty feet 
wide, lies on a hillside with its upper floor level with 



124 A SHAKER VILLAGE — COMMUNISM. 

the main road and the ground-floor opening on the fields 
behind it. Here are stalls for some seventy cows, and, 
above, are stores of winter forage, artificial manures 
and agricultural implements. Every cow has her own 
stall and knows it. The herd of handsome Holsteins 
had just arrived from the pastures and were collected 
in the yard, at the moment of our visit. When the 
barn doors were opened, each cow ran to her stall 
and thrust her head between a pair of vertical wooden 
beams, hollowed out to receive the neck. These 
beams are hinged to the floor and can be opened or 
closed, all together, by pulling a cord, thus releasing 
or securing the whole seventy at a stroke. Shaker 
cleanliness rules as absolutely in the barn as in the 
house, while the mechanical arrangements for collecting 
and utilizing all the fertilizer produced are perfect. 
Indeed, it would be difficult to say too much in favour 
of Shaker agriculture generally. Even ensilage, the 
latest farming improvement, has been introduced ; while 
for clean, careful and successful tillage, the Shakers can 
hold their own against Lincolnshire itself 

Returning from the barn to the North House, we met 
many of the brothers and sisters coming home from 
work. The men were dressed in long, light blue, cloth 
coats and wide, stiff-brimmed, grey, felt hats, beneath 
which their hair, worn long behind, fell down to their 
shoulders. The women's costume consists of what, for 
want of a better word, I must call bags, their shoulders 



A SHAKER VILLAGE — COMMUNISM. 125 

being covered with white capes, and their heads with ' 
deep sun-bonnets. All were on their way to the six 
o'clock evening meal and, Elder Evans being of our 
party, we were joined, as we passed through the laundry, 
by the two sisters in charge, women far past middle life, 
but whose shining faces spoke more eloquently than 
words of inward spiritual satisfaction. " I cannot under- 
stand," said Sister Annie, " how it is that so few human 
beings look for their happiness in a life where each is 
the servant of all. The world which seeks individual 
pleasure and possession finds less satisfaction than do 
we in our simple round of duty-doing." 

Each family eats in a common dining-room, the 
men at one table, the women at another and the 
apprentices at a third. When all are assembled, they 
kneel for a moment and then partake of the simple 
meal, usually consisting of vegetables only, in silence. 
There are, of course, no servants, but the housekeeping 
of a Shaker family is very effectively managed. Six 
sisters take monthly turns in cooking and six others 
in washing, while the supplies are given out by the 
deaconesses. All rise at half-past four in summer and 
half-past five in winter and each person, after dressing 
and silent prayer, strips his bed and then repairs to 
work. The house is vacated throughout the day, 
except by the sisters, who take turns in making beds 
and sweeping. Breakfast is at six, dinner at twelve, and 
supper at six ; by nine all are in bed and the lights are 



126 A SHAKER VILLAGE — COMMUNISM. 

out. Every evening is occupied by some kind of family 
meeting. Mondays are given to reading aloud, Tuesdays 
to singing, Wednesdays to conversation, Thursdays 
to religious service, Fridays to the practice of new songs 
and hymns, and Saturday to the pre-arranged visits of 
small parties to each other's rooms. 

Sunday's service is usually held in the assembly-hall 
of each family. Here, there are no seats, but the Shakers 
stand in two ranks, the men separated from and facing 
the women. After singing, the elder makes a short 
address, the ranks are then broken, and the brothers and 
sisters, forming separate squares, march round the room 
to a lively hymn tune, holding their hands before them and 
making a motion of gathering with their arms — "gather- 
ing a blessing." The march becomes a shuffling dance, 
whose precise and orderly movements are sometimes 
broken by the whirl of a troubled member to the front, 
and a subsequent performance like that of a spinning 
dervish. Now, some brother, in spiritual distress, asks 
for the prayers of the others, or a sister delivers a 
message from the spirit-world, in which the Shakers 
firmly believe. Suddenly, at a signal from the elder, 
the meeting breaks up and every one disperses. 

Being celibates, these people use extraordinary 
precautions in the intercourse of the sexes. It would 
be tedious to recount the minute regulations which 
govern the conduct of the Shakers in this regard, but, 
so far as a mere glimpse can reveal the character of the 



A SHAKER VILLAGE — COMMUNISM. 127 

society, absolute purity of life appears to be the rule at 
Mount Lebanon. Such impressions as we received on 
this point were strengthened in no small degree by the 
fact that one member of our party, a Pittsfield engineer, 
had spent a great deal of time at Mount Lebanon, fitting 
houses and workshops with warming and other apparatus, 
and he thoroughly believed in Shaker purity. 

Although the Shakers do not toil severely, aiming 
to make work a pleasure instead of a pain, they are 
very prosperous. They number altogether about two 
thousand five hundred souls, settled in fifty-eight families, 
on eighteen different spots in the United States, and 
cultivate nearly fifty thousand acres, besides owning 
a great deal of land in distant States. Their religion 
is fantastic rather than fanatical, while themselves are 
commonplace folks, utilitarian in their ideas, and with- 
out any knowledge of, or care for, literature, art, or 
accomplishments. They are extremely, not to say 
phenomenally, clean, honest in their dealings, humane 
and charitable in act. While no one among them is rich 
or poor, no one greater or less than another, all are 
secured from the results of misfortune or the advent of 
old age. They are abstainers from alcoholic liquors, 
most of them abstainers from meat. They are celibates, 
but scandal has never arraigned the society ; peace- 
lovers, although many of their young people went to the 
war, and good citizens, to the extent of observing the 
laws, paying the taxes and cultivating well the soil of 



128 A SHAKER VILLAGE — COMMUNISM. 

their country. Lastly, while Shakerism makes a religious 
service of man's daily life, it at least practises the 
doctrines of the Mount, and whatever we may think 
of its mysticism on the one hand, or celibacy on the 
other, it has created an Eden at Lebanon and peopled 
it with commonplace saints. As for the fantastic dogmas 
of its founder, Mother Ann Lee, what need to ransack 
the rubbish-heap of theology in the vain hope of finding 
a pearl .'' Some religious idea or other is, indeed, to be 
found at the base of all the communal experiments 
which have ever been tried in America. But these 
have another and much more important foundation- 
stone in the deeply seated dissatisfaction which the 
victims of adversity and oppression, to say nothing of 
the simply poor or simply thoughtful, feel with the 
existing constitution of society. 

Communism, as every one proclaims, is in the air. 
" It is the stock bogy of the pulpit, the press, and the 
platform, wherewith children of a larger growth are 
scared from peeping into the dark places of our social 
system. It is the club with which the guardians of 
society reason, the alias in public opinion of the 
Parisian petroleuse, a social craze which is diseasing 
labour and filling the minds of working men with 
dreams of an impossible Utopia." * 

Well, lighted by the candle of Christian practice, 
the Shakers have looked into these dark places, and 

* Rev. Heber Newton. 



A SHAKER VILLAGE — COMMUNISM. 129 

found no bogy there. They have had their little revolu- 
tion, too, but rebelling against society with churches and 
ploughs instead of fire and sword, they may well become 
our allies, although they cannot be our leaders, in the great 
social battle which seems now everywhere impending. 

Hitherto, we have been travelling through happy 
valleys, where capital, the lion, and wages, the lamb ; 
or, if you like it better, reader, where wages, the lion, 
and capital, the lamb, lie down together in peace ; but 
our next move will carry us to the field of an industrial 
battle which lasted for nearly fifteen years and was then 
only patched by a hollow peace, which may be broken 
again at any moment. For, if not generally in Western 
Massachusetts, then in most of the industrial cities of 
America, as in Europe, a counter-current of socialism 
is undoubtedly setting against the surface drift of our 
civilization, pressing itself on the attention of thoughtful 
men and being, for the most part, met by an army of 
Partingtons, defiantly twirling their mops. 

What does labour want? What can communism 
offer it? These were the questions we discussed in 
the buggy as we re-climbed the Taconic range and, 
turning our unwilling eyes from the now purple Cat- 
skills, printing the glowing west, dropped down the 
dusky mountain path towards Pittsfield, while Greylock's 
peaks, stippled with rose-coloured forest, shone upon us 
from time to time through gaps in the ghostly birch 
stems framing our homeward road. 

K 



I30 A SHAKER VILLAGE — COMMUNISM. 

The desire of labour is to work for something besides 
mere hire, and to enjoy that independence which, next 
to their hves, men value. We ourselves bend the educa- 
tion of youth so strongly towards the attainment of 
success in life, and stimulate the desire for wealth and 
distinction so powerfully, that it is not for us to complain 
if labour aims at our marks. On the contrary, every 
thoughtful man must regard with interest any plans 
which promise to extend the independence now enjoyed 
by the few to the many. 

Energy and economy are indeed able, with some 
assistance from opportunity, to raise the employed 
to the rank of employer, and hence the hopes which 
lighten the otherwise unbearable lot of labour. Take 
away those hopes, and the operative masses would sink 
into a condition of discontent, which, blind among the 
ignorant, would be bitter in proportion to their intelli- 
gence, among educated workmen, and, in either case, a 
danger to the State. 

But thrift itself, if the spring of hope to a few, is not 
the day-star of labour. Half the sons of toil regard 
wage-earning as a fixed condition of society, and the 
hireling as the enemy of his employer, with whom he 
accordingly wages war over the profits of industry. 
Such is the position of the trades-unionist, the 
legitimate son of the competitive system. Another 
half, turning from a struggle for existence in which 
every man's hand is at his brother's throat, and an 



A SHAKER VILLAGE — COMMUNISM. 131 

equitable distribution of common earnings impossible, 
would make collective property the solution of the 
social question, and communal life the ideal of man's 
existence. 

The last are, however, confronted with the fact that 
modern civilization rests upon the institution of private 
property, and that neither law nor society can conceive of 
any other order of things. Until our own generation, 
the ablest students of social science considered the 
Roman dominmm, the right of the individual to have 
and to hold, as a "law of nature," and no one even 
suspected that the foundations of private property are 
really laid in common ownership. This, indeed, was 
already deeply buried in its own ruins when Rome 
planned the shape and formulated the law of the modern 
world, and it was reserved for explorers like Laveleye, 
Nasse, Mayer and Sir Henry Maine to discover the 
debris of common property beneath the first courses of 
private property. The labours of these men have now, 
however, established the fact that individualism was 
everywhere preceded by communism, whose living 
examples the Slavic ;///;', the Swiss allmend, as well 
as the moribund English coinmoji, are only survivals of 
an organism once universally flourishing. 

These institutions, like a Shaker village, picture a 
past when every one had access to the soil, when fellow- 
ship lightened the labours of the field, and the common- 
wealth shared equally in the common store. Such were 



132 A SHAKER VILLAGE — COMMUNISM. 

the conditions of life in the " Golden Age " of collective 
property, among the family communities of the Middle 
Ages in Europe ; such they remain in the Slavonian 
village and Swiss forest cantons, and such, in principle, 
if varied in details to suit an industrial age, are those 
which the Communist seeks to restore. 

But the possibilities of communistic living were as 
powerless to satisfy the average man in the past as 
they are at Mount Lebanon to-day. Only the simplest 
or saintliest natures can breathe the atmosphere of a 
society where nothing stimulates aspiration or fires 
ambition, and where equal rewards await unequal 
capacities. Hence, as human nature became virile, 
individualism asserted itself more and more strongly, 
until, at length, communism fell into ruin as savagery 
itself had previously done upon the development of 
the family life. Wealth and power were the first-born 
children of individualism, while material progress and 
intellectual vigour are its younger sons. To name all its 
nobler offspring would be to catalogue the achievements 
of law, literature, science, art and culture ; to blazon the 
deeds of heroes, the lives of saints and the deaths of 
martyrs. 

But if man's head is among the stars, his feet are in 
the gutter. A few live in luxurious ease, while the many 
toil for wages which approach starvation point whenever 
trade is dull. Employers and employed, properly friends, 
quarrel over the division of profits and are always at 



A SHAKER VILLAGE — COMMUNISM. 133 

secret or open war. The law of the market is supreme 
over the law of the Mount. Charity, masquerading as 
human kindness, seeks to redress wrongs inflicted by 
denials of the law of love. Science seeks new victories 
among distant worlds, while poverty inhabits a fever den. 
Culture ennobles the intellect, poetry the emotions and 
art the taste of the few, while illiteracy is rampant among 
the masses. What wonder if, from the squalid-splendid 
temple of civilization, the cry goes up for a new social 
contract, for a new saviour of society ? What wonder, 
when the creeds of centuries are cracking all around 
them, that men, looking for a deliverer, should say, " Lo, 
he is here, or lo, there ! " while the Prince of Peace still 
tarries .'' 

While the few implore, the many menace. German 
Socialism, French Communism, Russian Nihilism, Eng- 
lish Trades-unionism and American discontent mass 
themselves more and more definitely over against the 
existing order. No common standard floats, as yet, above 
the sullen forces of labour which, indeed, threaten the 
overthrow before they have planned the reconstruction 
of society. The proletariat sees its enemy imperfectly, 
but feels the evils of life very keenly and, turning 
angrily upon society at large, declares, with Sam Weller 
" Who it is, I don't know ; but this I do know, somebody 
ought to be whopped for this." The question in all men's 
mouths is, " Who will negotiate a peace with labour 
before a new terror paralyzes or destroys civilization .-' " 



134 A SHAKER VILLAGE — COMMUNISM. 

It might, indeed, at once, be said that the peace- 
maker is at hand, but the metaphors of war, well as they 
seem to fit some conditions of society, must always fail 
of application to that which is really a process of evolu- 
tion. The struggle for existence, whether of organized 
beings or human institutions, is not, properly speaking, 
a battle at all. " Force," as Karl Marx says, "is some- 
times the accoucheur of an old society pregnant with a 
new one," but there are no lists set in which the new 
does the old to death. On the contrary, just as the 
age of invertebrates passed, successively, into that of 
fishes, reptiles, mammals and man, so the last, already 
barbaric, communistic and competitive by turns, seems 
about to acquire a new social form. It is a birth and 
not a battle for which the nineteenth century waits. 
" What will the new order be ? " and not " Who will save 
society .'* " is the true question of the hour. 

And it may be discussed without alarm even by 
timid thinkers. The savage, the family and the ego 
have all alike failed to create a stable condition of society, 
and the ttou gto) of civilization is yet to find. Mean- 
while, evolution never looks back. The roads which 
lead towards the unknown future, whether of life or 
society, are countless in their direction as well as in 
their number, but, branch as they may, these never 
return upon themselves. 

Hence, while no one desires a relapse to the condition 
of primitive man, the Communist vainly hopes to restore 



A SHAKER VILLAGE — COMMUNLSAL 135 

the Golden Age of collective property, and the trade- 
unionist dreams, as vainly, of victories yet to be won by 
hands over heads. Already, indeed, the age of indi- 
vidualism is passing into that of associated action and, 
economically speaking, the change from the old order to 
the new has begun. Capital co-operates in the Joint 
Stock Company. Private property, for its own preserva- 
tion and increase, is developing into associative property. 
Co-operative stores, building societies, credit banks ; 
even co-operative manufactures are springing up with 
marvellous rapidity in Europe, and begin to make an 
appearance in America, where, at present, the evils of 
individualism are but little felt. The immensity of these 
great corporations is a measure of the wealth that is 
being created and held in common. 

But if capital has mastered, more quickly than labour, 
the lesson that union is wealth as well as strength, it was, 
none the less, labour that first discovered the principle of 
co-operation. A few flannel-weavers, cotton-spinners 
and shoemakers, of Rochdale, who had no means but 
pence and no sense but common-sense, had the sagacity, 
forty years ago, to see that industry, which creates all 
wealth, can retain its own by taking all who labour with 
it into partnership. This humble but adventurous band 
opened its first petty and, as then appeared, absurd 
store in 1844, and, by that act, became the accoucheurs 
of a new, or the saviours of the old society, as trust 
or mistrust may regard the situation. " Who then 



136 A SHAKER VILLAGE — COMMUNISM. 

dreamed that these obscure persons would, in 1872, 
cause the shopkeepers in every high street of every 
town in the British Empire to cry to members of 
Parliament, praying to be rescued from the Red Sea 
of co-operation which threatens to submerge for ever 
all the tawdry chariots of higgling and huxtering ? " * 

Only a few, even now, dream that this same co- 
operation, a weakling forty years ago, but a giant to- 
day, will eventually arrange that in every combination 
of labour-lender and capital-lender the produce of profit 
shall be distributed in agreed proportions over all 
engaged in creating the profit. The difficulties in the 
way of this are not more serious than those which the 
Rochdale pioneers of 1844 have already conquered, and 
the greatest of them is personal interest. Economists, 
however, declare that prices, profit and interest are 
already slowly sinking towards a minimum ; or, in 
other words, that the limits of individual fortunes 
are gradually narrowing. Great fortunes, it is true, 
are still accumulated, but the greatest are illegitimate, 
and one Jay Gould does more mischief to indi- 
vidualism than a whole platform of socialist orators. 
The shrinkage of interest, again, only indicates the 
activity of social forces whose resultant will be the 
abolition of the non-productive classes, the realization 
of Paul's ideal, " Qui non laborat, non manducet." 

But " I have " will not do battle with " we have," 

* G.J. Holyoake, " History of Co-operation." 



A SHAKER VILLAGE — COMMUNISM. 137 

although there may be a stage combat between them. 
As the social change now in question proceeds, " owners 
of capital," to quote John Stuart Mill, "will gradually 
find it to their advantage, instead of maintaining the 
struggle with such work-people as are not already 
absorbed into co-operative associations, to lend to 
these associations." In this way " existing accumula- 
tions of capital might honestly and spontaneously 
become the joint property of all who participate in their 
productive employment, a transformation which would 
be the nearest approach to social justice and the most 
beneficial ordering of industrial affairs for the universal 
good which it is possible at present to foresee." 

For co-operation "seeks no plunder, causes no dis- 
turbances in society, gives no trouble to statesmen, 
enters into no secret associations, needs no trades-union 
to protect its interests, contemplates no violence, subverts 
no order, envies no dignity, accepts no gift, nor asks for 
any favour ; keeps no terms with the idle and breaks no 
faith with the industrious. It has its hand in no man's 
pocket, and does not intend that any hands shall remain 
long or comfortably in its own. It means self-help, self- 
dependence, and such share of the common competence 
as labour shall earn or thought can win." * 

As communism, offering an uncongenial home to 
character, begot competition, with whom justice cannot 
dwell, so competition is begetting co-operation, in whose 
* G. J. Holyoake, " History of Co-operation." 



138 A SHAKER VILLAGE — COMMUNISM. 

kingdom progress will not be accompanied by undeserved 
poverty, " Each for all," instead of " each for each," will 
yet be the watchword of industry, and the device, let 
us hope, for that flag of discontented labour which still 
wants a motto. The long conflict between capital and 
labour draws to a close, and the treaty of peace between 
these old foes will be a deed of industrial partnership. 
" Beyond all dreams of the Golden Age will be the 
splendour, majesty and happiness of the free peoples 
when, fulfilling the promise of the ages and the hopes 
of humanity, they shall have learned how to make 
equitable distribution among themselves of the fruits of 
their common labour." * 

* Hon. Abram Hewitt, Speech on opening of Broolclyn Bridge. 



CHAPTER IX. 

NORTH ADAMS — AN INDUSTRIAL BATTLE — 

WILLIAMSTOWN. 

"We are ruined by Chinese cheap labour." 

Leaving Pittsfield for North Adams, the most northerly 
manufacturing town in Massachusetts, the railway soon 
crosses the watershed of the Housatonic and strikes 
the sources of the Hoosac River. These have been 
artificially collected into an immense, lake-like reservoir, 
the reliance in dry seasons of every mill on this busy 
stream, which flows northward until it is well behind the 
Greylock range, around whose feet it wheels towards the 
west to pour through a gap in the Taconics on its way 
to the mighty Hudson. The Hoosac is still a baby 
river when it begins work, and its course is so steep 
that it runs, so to speak, out of one factory into another, 
dancing over its boulder-strewn bed whenever the mill- 
owner lets it out to play. 

North Adams, a town of fifteen thousand souls, lies 



I40 AN INDUSTRIAL BATTLE. 

upon the westward sweep of the stream, and seems 
almost buried among the hills, so closely and steeply 
is it environed by the spurs of the Greylock range. The 
mountains assume a very different appearance here to 
that which they wear at Pittsfield. There, the observer 
stands on the summit of a great swell of land, itself 
nearly twelve hundred feet high, and whose base extends 
from the Sound to the St. Lawrence, rising from which, 
the highest peaks, whether of the Greylock, Taconic, or 
Hoosac ranges, form mere gracefully flowing lines in the 
landscape. But, at Adams, the Hoosac valley is four 
hundred feet lower than that of the Housatonic at Pitts- 
field, while the hills themselves, instead of standing 
remote from the stream, press closely upon it, to the 
great gain of the scenery in grandeur. 

There are many industries in Adams — cotton-mills, 
print-works, paper factories and boot- and shoe-shops ; 
but it is only the latter which we have come to see. Not 
that the town is noted for this particular manufacture, 
but because of the interest attaching to an attempt made 
here some years ago to introduce Chinese labour into a 
Massachusetts manufactory. Before telling the story, 
however, something must be said about American boot- 
and shoe-shops, the parents of our own great establish- 
ments at Leicester and Northampton. 

The making of boots and shoes was one of the 
earliest, and is one of the most important of American 
industries. Setting milling and meat-packing aside, 



AN INDUSTRIAL BATTLE. 141 

as being agricultural rather than mechanical in their 
character, boot- and shoe-making is only surpassed in 
importance by the cotton, clothing, lumber, and iron 
and steel industries of the country. Cotton is king in 
America, as in England, so far as the employment of 
labour is concerned ; but Saint Crispin counts seventy 
followers for every hundred of King Cotton's subjects. 
In value of products, iron and steel are supreme among 
American manufactures, but the shoemakers only lack 
eighteen per cent, of the ironmasters and eight per cent, 
of the cotton-lords in the money's worth of their goods. 
Considerably more than half of this immense business, 
worth in the aggregate nearly forty millions of pounds 
sterling, is monopolized by the State of Massachusetts, 
where more than seventy thousand people earn their 
living by the last, a sixth of this number being centred 
in one place, the old fishing village of Lynn, near 
Boston. 

Lynn has been distinguished for this branch of 
industry almost from the landing of the Pilgrims in 
1620. The first English shoemakers to settle there 
were Philip Kirtland and Edmund Bridges, who arrived 
in 1635. But they were preceded in Massachusetts by 
Thomas Beard and Isaac Rickman, passengers in the 
Mayflower, as we learn from a letter to the Deputy- 
Governor of the New England Company, dated London 
1629: — 

" Thomas Beard, a shoemaker, and Isack Rickman, 



142 AN INDUSTRIAL BATTLE. 

being both recomended to vs by M'' Symon Whetcombe 
to receive their dyett and house roome at the charge of 
the Companie, we have agreed they shall be w^'' you the 
Governor, or placed elsewhere, as you shall think good, 
and receive from you their dyett and lodging for w" they 
are to pay, each of them, at the rate of £\o p'' ann™. 
The said Thos : Beard hath in the ship, the May Flozver, 
divers hydes both for soles and vpp leathers w'' hee 
intends to make into botes and shoes there in the 
country." 

To return to Lynn. Shoemaking, begun by Kirt- 
land and Bridges, in the seventeenth, made great strides 
in the eighteenth century, under the influence of a Welsh- 
man named Adam Dagyr, who, by the excellence of his 
shoes, soon made this business the most important in- 
dustry of the town. Lynn was, and still is, essentially a 
fishing station, and this circumstance assisted, strangely 
enough, to determine its industrial destiny. The colonial 
fisherman, like the colonial housewife, was great at self- 
help. As she produced all the family homespun, so he 
made his own watertight boots, and, when his fishing 
gear was laid aside for the winter, he took naturally to 
the last as a source of additional income. 

Until within the last thirty years, shoes were made 
entirely by hand, and a shoemaker's shop in Massa- 
chusetts consisted of a framed and shingled shanty, 
about ten or twelve feet square, containing from four to 
eight " berths," as the spaces occupied by the workmen 



AN INDUSTRIAL BATTLE. 143 

were called. The introduction of the pegging-machine 
was the first step towards the factory system, as the 
next consisted in the invention of the shuttle sewings- 
machine, patented by Elias Howe, in 1846. By these 
two machines the production of each operative was 
enormously increased, and when they were followed by 
the MacKay stitcher, which sews the soles and uppers 
together, and thus supersedes the cobbler's awl, a revolu- 
tion in shoemaking was accomplished. In 1845, while 
boots and shoes were still made entirely by hand, four 
hundred and fifty pairs per operative per annum was the 
Lynn rate of production. Twenty years later, when 
comparatively few of the mechanical appliances now in 
use had been introduced, this number rose to six hundred, 
while in 1875, as at the present time, twelve hundred 
pairs of shoes per annum constitutes the out-turn for 
each factory hand. 

The shoe factories, whether of Lynn or Adams, are 
large and handsome buildings, fitted with all the refine- 
ments which we found and described in the shops of the 
Naugatuck valley, and equipped with most ingenious 
automatic machinery. Beginning at the bottom, or, in 
other words, with the sole leather, we follow this into a 
room where it is cut by a system of revolving knives 
into strips of the required length and width. The strips 
are sorted for quality, and, after being packed in bundles 
of sixty pairs each, are carried to the " stock-fitting " room. 
Here, they are run — first, through a splitter, which 



144 AN INDUSTRIAL BATTLE. 

reduces them to a uniform thickness, and then between 
a pair of rollers, whose heavy pressure solidifies the 
leather and accomplishes work formerly done by the 
lapstone and hammer. The soles are next cut to shape 
by steel dies pressing upon a wooden block, which 
rotates in such a manner that each die makes seven 
hundred cuts before descending for a second time upon 
the same spot. The outer sole is then successively 
channeled, or grooved, ready for the MacKay stitcher ; 
moulded, or shaped to the bottom of the last ; labelled, 
numbered, and sent away to await a meeting with the 
uppers. These, after being stamped, like the soles, from 
calf or other leather, find their way to a room which is 
full of sewing-machines, driven by power and attended 
by women. Here, fashion determines how far ornamental 
stitching shall be carried, and the beautified products are 
next handed over to the trimmers, who fit them either 
with elastic sides, buttons and button-holes, or, assisted 
by a most ingenious self-acting eye-letting machine, 
with lace-holes. 

Soles and uppers are now ready to meet, which they 
do in the "bottoming" department. The first operation 
is called " lasting ; " the uppers being placed on a last 
and tacked to the inner soles, after which the outer soles 
are added and secured with a few nails, while the tacks 
are removed. The boot or shoe is now ready for the 
MacKay sewing-machine, which stitches five hundred 
pairs of soles and uppers in a day. Leaving this 



AN INDUSTRIAL BATTLE. 145 

machine, the " channels " are cemented, and the boot or 
shoe passed through an apparatus which lays these 
smoothly over the stitching, subjecting each sole at the 
same time to an immense pressure, and thus adding to 
the solidity it has already acquired in passing through 
the compression rollers. 

The goods are now ready for the heels, which, being 
first drilled, are next " loaded " by hand with the 
requisite nails, and then fastened to the sole by a single 
stroke of a machine contrived for this purpose. The 
heels are shaved by a self-acting knife, their edges 
trimmed and burnished by one, and those of the soles 
by another special tool, after which the bottoms are 
scoured, first upon revolving sanded rollers and then 
upon others loaded with fine buffing powder. Lastly, 
the " waists " are blacked and burnished, the inner soles 
lined, and bows, trimmings, or tassels added, as required, 
leaving the goods ready for the packing case and the 
market. 

As we have already seen, trade-unionism plays but 
a small part in determining the relations between 
American employers and native American labour, and 
that because of the equality which, in New England, 
always characterized this relationship in the past, and 
does so still, to a very great extent, especially in Con- 
necticut and Western Massachusetts. But, with the 
growth of the factory system and consequent expansion 
of business, native labour, whether in the States generally 

L 



146 AN INDUSTRIAL BATTLE. 

or in New England, has become more and more largely 
diluted with a foreign element. Of the effects already 
produced and in course of production, by this cause, 
more hereafter ; it will be sufficient for present purposes 
to say that nearly forty operatives in every hundred 
employed in the American shoe trade are of alien, chiefly 
of Irish and French-Canadian birth. But in the days 
before the introduction of machinery, the shoemaker's 
shop, especially at Lynn, was thoroughly Yankee in 
character. The summer fishermen and winter cobblers, 
if not all descendants of early colonists, were children 
of the free school, debaters of the town meeting, crafts- 
men who, for the most part, employed themselves, and 
if hired by others, made their own bargain with the 
employer. To surrender this function into the hands 
of any trade-society would have seemed to them 
something more than a loss of freedom, a denial of 
equality. All this has changed, and the craft is now 
dominated by the " Crispin " trade-society, the largest 
and most powerful organization of the kind in America. 
About fifteen years ago, Mr. Sampson, a North 
Adams shoe manufacturer, and a shrewd, courageous 
man, was greatly troubled by certain of his Irish and 
French-Canadian eiiiployes, acting under the orders of 
the Crispin Society. It was, at that time, even more 
difficult than it is now to equip a factory with American 
help, but Mr. Sampson was very anxious to engage native 
operatives, both because of their superior intelligence and 



AN INDUSTRIAL BATTLE. iA7 

independence of trade-societies. The Crispins, however, 
strongly resented the employment of any man, not a 
member of their guild, boycotting him in the workshop, 
and making life outside of it so disagreeable, socially, 
that he was soon glad, for the sake of peace and quiet, 
to leave North Adams. 

Meanwhile, Mr. Sampson's business was brisk, and the 
concern hard pressed to fill its orders ; but the Crispins 
would make no effort to meet the increasing demand, pre- 
ferring to lose rather than make time, and spending more 
money than usual in lager-beer saloons, or with the " rum- 
sellers." They, further, insisted that the full piece-work 
price should be paid for work, whether better or worse 
done by one workman than another, and established a 
committee of inspection to overlook all rejections, usually 
insisting in such cases on full payment to the operative. 
At length, they formally demanded that their committee 
should have access to the books of the concern, for the 
purpose of fixing rates of wages in accordance with 
profits. Thereupon, as might be expected, industrial 
war was declared. Mr. Sampson took a bold line. 
Discharging every hand in the place, he went himself 
at once to San Francisco, and returned with seventy-five 
Chinamen, whom he established in the factory. These 
men were taught how to handle the machinery by 
non-society instructors, who were paid wages of from 
£$ to ^20 a week, as an inducement to risk the vengeance 
of the old hands. Meanwhile, houses were built for the 



148 AN INDUSTRIAL BATTLE. 

coolies within the walls of the manufactory, so that the 
men need not appear in the streets, and every precaution 
was taken against incendiarism. 

The experiment,' at first, ended in total failure. 
Ignorant of the Chinese labour market, Mr. Sampson 
had brought with him a number of worthless men, 
natives of Hong Kong and Macao, the latter, in many 
cases, Portuguese half-breeds. Nothing daunted, he sent 
more than half of them back to California, retaining 
only the Cantonese, and commissioning the best five 
of these to go again to San Francisco and select him 
a fresh lot. Thus, he got together three hundred hands, 
all good men, and housed them on his own premises. 
In the course of a very short time, the Chinamen learned 
their business perfectly and developed so much aptitude 
for the work that, after a few months, the white help 
was not missed at all. Their skill in the factory was 
equalled by their good behaviour out of it. Patient, 
painstaking and industrious in the mill, they were quiet, 
sober and peaceable in their homes. For a long time it 
was dangerous for them to go into the streets, the more 
violent Crispins threatening Mr. Sampson's own life, 
while they made several attempts to burn down the 
manufactory. These, however, were all frustrated by 
sleepless vigilance, and, after a while, the society men, 
recognizing their complete defeat, began to seek employ- 
ment elsewhere. Within six months of their arrival, the 
Chinese could move about the town without fear of 



AN INDUSTRIAL BATTLE. 149 

molestation in the daytime, although they prudently 
continued to sleep within the factory walls. Thus 
matters went on for upwards of ten years, during the 
whole of which time Mr. Sampson's mill was run by 
means of Chinese labour alone, while other shoe-shops, 
without following his example, were freed from the 
domination of the Crispin Society by his act. 

At the end of this time, however, Mr. Sampson let his 
Chinese workmen go. The traders of North Adams 
never failed, from first to last, to complain that the 
"heathen Chinee" had hardly any wants.. The rum- 
sellers were furious because he drank nothing stronger 
than tea, while Mr. Sampson's personal friends, preju- 
diced, like the majority of Americans, against the yellow 
race, constantly urged his return to the employment 
of white labour. His position, indeed, became, at length, 
something like that of a non-society man in a shop full 
of Crispins. If not actually boycotted by his acquaint- 
ances, they made him, socially, so uncomfortable that he 
finally gave up his Chinamen for the sake of a peaceful 
life. They left North Adams with much regret, felt and 
expressed on both sides, at parting, and are now replaced 
in the factory, where they lived and worked so long, 
chiefly by American operatives, few of whom, however, 
are members of the Crispin organization. 

Thus this curious and interesting industrial battle 
ended in a Pyrrhic victory for the trade-unionist ; for, if 
I may judge from the manner in which Mr. Sampson 



ISO AN INDUSTRIAL BATTLE. 

told me the story, whenever competition without, or 
domination within the factory, pushes that gentleman 
again into a corner, he will brave the rage of rum-sellers, 
the complaints of storekeepers and even the coolness 
of his friends, and send for his Chinamen back again. 

The persecution of the yellow race is one of the 
most disappointing facts which the traveller encounters 
in the United States, whose citizens will quote the 
Declaration of Independence in support of the equal 
rights of all men, irrespective of race or colour, while 
denying those rights to the Chinese. But, abstract 
principles apart, America has formally agreed, in a series 
of treaties, to extend the same privileges and protection 
to the Chinese residents in the country, as the Americans 
themselves enjoy in China. Yet, in spite of this, law, as 
well as justice, is constantly set at naught when it is a 
question of Mongol interests. 

Prejudice itself cannot deny that the Chinese in 
America, whether merchants or coolies, are distinguished 
by qualities which the white races respect, while, class 
for class, they are their equals in morality and order. 
The Chinese operative whom, especially, State legisla- 
tion, not less than popular violence, outrages, really 
approaches very nearly to our ideal of a working man. 
He is abstemious as to food, a total abstainer from 
drink, docile, industrious and painstaking in his work, 
patient, respectful and quiet in behaviour. He keeps no 
" Saint Monday," and loses no time during the week ; 



AN INDUSTRIAL BATTLE. 151 

requires scarcely any supervision, and, if a pipe of 
opium is his Saturday night's luxury, he is none the 
worse for it when he leaves the so-called " opium den " 
— a far more respectable place, as my own eyes have 
testified, than many a saloon where the whisky-drinker 
maddens himself. 

Paganism, filth, the depletion of American wealth 
and the danger of their numerical supremacy are the 
charges urged, unproved, against the Chinese immigrants ; 
but the coolie's real and unpardonable offence is that he 
works for four shillings, while his white equivalent 
demands a wage of five shillings a day. There is no 
room for surprise if, under these circumstances, Irish and 
European, which, rather than native American labour 
is concerned in this matter, should bitterly resent the 
Mongol competition ; but that which fills every fair- 
minded man with astonishment is the attitude of both 
Federal and State Governments towards a people whose 
rights America has covenanted to uphold, and whose 
persons she is bound to protect. 

In spite of the treaties whose provisions have been 
already alluded to, innumerable acts of violence have 
been done to unoffending Chinamen in California 
and elsewhere, without a finger being lifted by the law 
in their defence. On the contrary, legislation has 
strengthened rather than stayed outrage, by enacting 
oppressive and, in some cases, unconstitutional laws, 
solely for the purpose of harrying the Chinese, The 



152 WILLIAMSTOWN. 

Federal Government, on the other hand, under pretence 
of alarm lest Mongol hordes might swamp, or Mongol 
manners contaminate the country, has twice forbidden 
the immigration of the Chinese, and, if a presidential 
veto once remedied this legislative tyranny, the prohibi- 
tion is in full force to-day. As a matter of fact, there 
is not a public man in America who fears that a hundred 
thousand poor and peaceful coolies will either dominate 
or degrade fifty millions of free and intelligent people, 
and, recognizing the hollowness of the case against 
these hardly used and helpless Orientals, it causes as 
much surprise as pain to see the great Republic turning 
its back upon the principles of its own charter and 
legislating at the bidding of prejudice and violence. 

A charming stage ride of four miles, following the 
Hoosac river past the feet of Greylock, brought me to 
Williamstown, which peaceful and academical village 
lies buried, like Adams, among mountains, here en- 
closing a lovely triangular valley, where the Green River 
joins the Hoosac in its course to the Hudson. The 
town is built on a boldly undulating plateau of lime- 
stone which, rising to a considerable height from the 
lower ground, affords magnificent views of the encircling 
hills, whose forest-covered crests tower to heights of three 
and four thousand feet. The valley is wholly settled by 
farmers ; there is not a manufactory, and hardly a retail 
shop in the village, whose pretty white bungalows rise 
from park-like and elm-shaded stretches of turf, while 



WILLIAMS TOWN. 153 

the undulating main street is bordered at intervals by the 
halls, chapel, museum and library of Williams College. 

This institution owes its existence to Colonel Ephraim 
Williams, a New England gentleman, who for many 
years of the last century led a sea-faring life, and, in 
the course of numerous voyages to Europe, acquired con- 
siderable information and a great respect for learning. 
In the French-Indian campaign of 1744-48, known as 
King George's war. Colonel Williams greatly distinguished 
himself and, after the peace, was appointed commander 
of a line of forts which compelled his residence at Fort 
Massachusetts, standing on the edge of Adams, and a 
few miles from what is now Williamstown. It was 
under the protection of this little stronghold that the first 
settlers occupied the valley already mentioned, which 
has a splendid soil, and whence the plough has now 
pushed its way far up the mountain slopes. 

Witnessing the efforts, and sympathizing with the 
difficulties of these hardy pioneers, Colonel Williams, 
who owned considerable land among them, conceived 
the idea of doing something for the education of their 
sons. Becoming colonel of a regiment which, in the last 
French-Indian war of 1755, was operating on Lake 
George, he, with a scouting party of twelve hundred 
men, fell into an ambush and was killed. But, while 
halting at Albany, on his way to this very campaign, he 
made a will providing for the sale of his property and 
its application within five years of an established peace 



154 WILLIAMSTOWN. 

to the building of a free school near Fort Massachusetts, 
provided that, when a township was incorporated there, 
it should be called after himself This bequest resulted 
first in an excellent school and, afterwards, in the present 
college of Williamstown, towards whose establishment 
the Massachusetts legislature, a few years later, granted 
a lottery — not an unusual thing in those days. 

The college buildings are, for the most part, plain 
and without any academic air, but, spite of a chapel 
like the conventicle of an English country town, a very 
unpretentious library and a number of barrack-like 
" halls," where the men live, its romantic situation, park- 
enfolded homes and peaceful atmosphere place Williams- 
town easily ahead of every other New England village 
for beauty. 

Sunday morning found me at the college chapel, 
where some two hundred, out of two hundred and fifty, 
students were assembled. The service was congre- 
gational in form and, in some respects, a little dis- 
appointing. The extempore prayers were too spiritual 
in their character, treating this life as a mere prepara- 
tion for another, and dismissing the question of conduct 
in favour of vague speculations on the divine influence. 
The singing, by a choir of students, was crude and 
inharmonious, and fond English prejudice regretted the 
absence of academical costume among the students and 
clerical vestments upon the preacher's rostrum. There 
was, indeed, nothing " churchy " about the whole thing. 



WILLIAMS TO WN. 15 5 

The men lounged in their seats and read their papers 
while waiting for the service to begin, or chatted to- 
gether as people do before a lecture. 

But the sermon, and the intelligent attention it 
aroused, made ample amends for all this. A more direct 
and powerful attack on the sins of youth, more pre- 
scient picturing of their consequences, more loving 
dissuasion from the weakness which fathers them, more 
virile incitement to the strength which resists the devil, 
I have never heard from any pulpit. The preacher did 
not mince matters one whit. He called both peccadilloes 
and greater sins by their names, and if the simplicity of 
his homely warnings against the " first glass of wine " 
and the " first cigarette " raised an audible ripple of 
laughter among his audience, the solemnity with which 
he specified and denounced worse evils made many 
thoughtful young faces look stern, and even the thought- 
less grave. The whole sermon offered a striking example 
of that pulpit influence to which New Englanders 
attach so much importance as an element in the 
conduct of life. 

Undergraduate life at Williamstown differs materi- 
ally from that of Oxford or Cambridge. The so-called 
college is, properly speaking, a university, or place of 
learning, for there is, as usual in America, no college 
system. The "halls" in which the students "room " are 
merely dormitories, where the men sleep and read, but do 
not eat or drink. They board either in private families, 



156 WILLIAMSTOVVxV. 

or at the neighbouring hotel, where they also entertain, 
instead of in the college rooms or the college dining-hall, 
as with us. Of college contests and esprit de corps there 
are none ; but their places are taken by the bonds and 
rivalries of certain " secret societies." These are nothing 
more than students' clubs, which affect a little mystery 
in their organization, and are distinguished by crypto- 
gramic titles, whose meaning is only known to the 
members. Thus the letters. A, A, <I>, carved on the facade 
of one of the largest societies, may possibly signify au 
^Hvoq (pajtiv (always terrible eaters), although nothing 
beyond examples, it is said, supports this view of the 
case. Some of these clubs are wealthy institutions ; old 
members, who have succeeded in life, delighting to bring 
liberal offerings to the lares and penates of their college 
days, so that many of them are now housed in spacious 
and handsome temples. 

The sabbath evening was still and peaceful, and I 
sat on the verandah of the hotel, looking, by turns, up 
to the wooded summits of Clarksburg, Beacon Hill, and 
Greylock, already tinged with sunset pink, around upon 
the white, lawn-bordered homes of farmers and pro- 
fessors, or down the dusky Hoosac valley, where a silver 
thread of water wound about, and was finally lost sight 
of in the folds of Taconic's forest robe. In the porch of 
the "terrible eaters'" lodge, just opposite, a group of 
students, picturesquely disposed, was singing the even- 
ing hymn in harmony, while above the great, grey hills 



WILLIAMS TOWN. 157 

a rising moon hung her silver shield over against the 
sunset's crimson. Thus the May night fell, lightly as 
sleep, upon a scene of singular beauty and purity, closing 
a day made delightful to me by rest from labour and 
labour- questions, by some pleasant glimpses of American 
youth, and by the bright anticipations for its manhood 
to which those glimpses gave rise. 



CHAPTER X. 

THE HOOSAC TUNNEL — DEERFIELD — HOLYOKE. 

The city of Boston, lying upon the eastern edge of the 
Atlantic slope, is separated from all the States westward of 
Massachusetts by the successive ridges of the Alleghany 
chain. This, in colonial days, was a matter of very little 
consequence, for, at that time, settled America consisted 
of only a narrow strip of land bordering the Atlantic, 
but, with the growth of the country and of commerce, 
Boston found itself placed at increasing disadvantage 
from its want of east and west communication. 

New York, on the other hand, situated upon the 
Hudson river, enjoys a scarcely interrupted waterway 
from the ocean to the Canada line, and a not less easy 
road to the west. The Hudson is a tidal estuary as far 
as Albany, and the railroads on its banks are level 
throughout that distance. Westward of Albany, the 
highest station on the New York Central Railway is 
not quite nine hundred feet above sea-level, and there 
are no heavy grades all the way to the great lakes. 
This results from the fact that, while the trend of the 



THE HOOSAC TUNNEL — DEERFIELD. 159 

Alleghanies is north and south, the outcrops of its 
geological formations in New York State run east and 
west, and the softer of these, having weathered into low 
valleys, form easy routes whether for the railway or 
canal which connects New York with Lake Erie. 

About seventy years ago, the Massachusetts people 
conceived the idea of constructing a canal from the 
Hudson over the Berkshire Hills to Boston, in the hope 
of diverting some of the ever-increasing western traffic 
from New York. This was to carry a waterway over both 
the important ranges with which we are now familiar, 
besides climbing many minor hills resting against their 
flanks. The Taconics, indeed, offered some convenient 
gaps in their ramparts to the canal-maker, but the 
Hoosacs reared a barrier two thousand five hundred 
feet high directly in his path, while nowhere in the 
Green Mountain range, of which the Hoosacs are but a 
spur, from the Sound to the Canada line, could he find 
a pass lower than fifteen hundred feet above tide water. 

The Massachusetts men were, however, very keen on 
their canal, and a State Commission, appointed in 1825, 
was courageous enough to report, even in those early 
days, in favour of a scheme which included tunnelling 
the Hoosac mountain near North Adams, and a grand 
system of locks having a total rise of more than three 
thousand feet. Bold as it was, the plan would have 
been attempted but for the timely introduction of steam 
as a locomotive agent. This, while it cured Massachu- 



i6o THE HO OS AC TUNNEL — DEERFIELD. 

setts of tunnel fever, set the engineers looking for the 
easiest grades over the Green Mountain range. In the 
result, the Boston and Albany Railroad was built, about 
1836, and this excellent, if hilly and winding track, 
served the wants of the commonwealth until 1848, when 
the desire for an easier east and west route induced 
a second attack of tunnel fever in Massachusetts. Six 
years later, the State raised a loan of two million dollars 
for the prosecution of the work, a sum which was more 
than doubled before the locomotive first threaded the 
Green Mountains, in 1875. 

A steep grade carried us up from Adams to the 
raeeed, schistose mouth of the tunnel, nine hundred feet 
above sea-level, and, after fifteen minutes of darkness, 
our train issued into the valley of the Deerfield at a 
point whence the bed of this stream offers an easy 
descent to the Connecticut River. This spot is so 
obviously the best in the whole range for the tunnel to 
enter the mountain, that, when the great undertaking 
was still under debate in the Massachusetts Legislature, 
General Hoyt, one of the canal commissioners of 1825, 
won the hearty cheers of the house by declaring that 
the finger of Providence had itself pointed out exactly 
where the Hoosac mountain should be pierced. " It 
would have saved the State considerable money," said 
a member, continuing the discussion, " if Providence 
had pushed His finger through." 

The Deerfield River occupies one of the most beauti- 



" A HORDE OF INDUSTRIAL INVADERS." i6i 

ful mountain valleys in New England, its bright brown 
waters leaping rapidly down through the earlier part of 
their course between steep, rocky walls, which are 
densely clothed with birch and maple forests. After a 
few miles, its flanks become less precipitous, but the 
stream remains swift, while scattered houses and patches 
of cultivation begin to appear as the valley widens. At 
Shelburn Falls, the river throws itself headlong over a 
high limestone ledge, and here, for a time, takes on the 
peculiar and romantic character which frequently dis- 
tinguishes the passage of mountain streams through 
crystalline calcareous rocks. The scenery at this point 
is extremely beautiful. The clear, rushing water is 
closely bordered by a dense and varied foliage, just now 
painted with the tenderest of spring tints. Through 
occasional gaps in this greenery, the traveller, flying 
down the steep grades, catches momentary glimpses of 
the Deerfield, now pouring in gathered volume through 
narrow channels of limestone, then spreading widely and 
smilingly over broad, bouldery reaches, bordered by 
fields and isolated farmhouses. Arrived at the town of 
Deerfield, the valley opens widely, its now gentle slopes 
being thickly covered with fertile drift soils, where the 
plough is busy as we pass. Flatter and more extensive 
grow the rich river-bottoms, until these merge at length 
into the vast alluvial plains of the Connecticut River 
itself 

The position of Deerfield made it, oftener than any 

M 



i62 "A HORDE OF INDUSTRIAL INVADERS:' 

other New England village, a scene, in colonial times, of 
those bloody tragedies which characterized the terrible 
French-Indian wars of the last century. This long series 
of encounters which, beginning towards the close of the 
seventeenth century, only ended with the capture of 
Quebec in 1759, were far worse in their effect upon the 
colonists than any of the earlier and more desultory 
struggles, in which they were engaged with the red man. 
They were in reality fought against the French, who had 
succeeded in obtaining the help of the native warriors 
in the contest then in progress between England and 
France, for supremacy in the New World. No open 
battles took place during this hundred years' war, the 
Indians trusting chiefly to surprises and night attacks. 
A lonely family, or the inhabitants of a remote village 
were always liable to be awakened from sleep by the 
war whoop, or, if the redskins attacked by day, they 
waited until the men were a-field, and then fell upon the 
defenceless women and children. 

It was in the winter of 1704, that a party of three 
hundred French and Indians, under the command of the 
infamous De Rouville, marching down from Canada for 
the purpose, fell upon Deerfield one February morning, 
a little before daybreak. Colonel Schuyler, of Albany, 
had warned the people, some months before, that an ex- 
pedition was being planned against them, and they had 
accordingly built a barricade around their houses and 
kept a nightly watch. But, on the morning in question, 



" A HORDE OF INDUSTRIAL INVADERS:' 163 

the sentinel had fallen asleep before dawn, and the un- 
happy villagers were first aroused by Indian yells. One 
party of redskins forced its way into the house of the 
Rev. John Williams, a minister who, five years before, had 
made a successful resistance to a similar but less important 
attack. Him, his wife and family, they seized and bound, 
killing two of his children before his eyes, and plunder- 
ing his house of every valuable. Meanwhile, the larger 
body of assailants fired the town, but not before the 
tomahawk and scalping-knife had done their deadly 
work in almost every house. 

Mr. Williams, his wife and five remaining children, 
together with some hundred other captives, were then 
loaded with the plunder and driven before their enemies 
northwards towards Canada. Their route lay over the 
Green Mountain range, deeply buried in snow, and 
covered with the primeval forest, which, in many places, 
was scarcely penetrable by man ; and, day by day, as 
one or another of the wretched party, heavily laden and 
almost naked, fell from hunger or exhaustion, he was 
despatched by the redskins. Seventeen persons, among 
whom was Mr. Williams' wife, were thus tomahawked, 
and other two died of hunger. 

Upon his arrival in Quebec, Mr. Williams was, how- 
ever, humanely treated by the French authorities, and, at 
the end of two years, was redeemed from captivity. 
Returning again to Deerfield, the eleven following years 
of his life were years of warfare. The village was fre- 



i64 " A HORDE OF INDUSTRIAL IXVADERS." 

quently alarmed and harassed, although it never again 
suffered so comprehensive a disaster, and the war, after 
a time, drifted away elsewhere. One of Mr. Williams' 
children, a daughter, seven years old at the time of the 
attack, never returned to her family, the Indians having 
adopted her as their child, and no efforts, whether of the 
Government or individuals, could prevail on them to give 
her up. She was afterwards married to a chief, and one 
of her grandchildren, educated among whites, became 
a missionary to the Oneida tribe. 

Such was one among a thousand incidents of a 
similar character attending the struggle, which termi- 
nated in the fall of Greater France and the rise of 
Greater Britain in America. Petty as its bloody details 
seem in comparison with the great eighteenth-century 
wars between France and England, of which Europe was 
the scene ; beside the struggles of Clive and Dupleix in 
India, or of Montcalm and Wolfe on the plains of Quebec, 
all were alike results of the fact that, whatever the 
ostensible cause of their quarrel, and whether they 
crossed swords in Europe, Asia, or America, France and 
England, for the hundred years preceding the Peace of 
Paris, were really competing for a prize of incalculable 
value, the possession of the New World. 

The valley of the Connecticut, or " long river " of the 
Indians, which we have now fairly entered, differs alto- 
gether from the rock-bound glens of the Naugatuck and 
Housatonic rivers. Its stream has the same north and 



" A HORDE OF INDUSTRIAL INVADERS:' 165 

south course, but, instead of swiftly threading mountain 
glens excavated in primitive rocks, it flows, except 
where hurried by falls, in a wide, slow stream over 
rocks of triassic age, which rise upon either side into an 
indefinite succession of plains and undulations. 

The valley varies from five to forty-five miles in 
width, having the Lyme range, which merges, farther 
north, into the White Mountains, upon the east, and 
a succession of trap hills which, going north, give way to 
the Green Mountains, on the west. It is characterized 
throughout its whole length of four hundred miles by a 
succession of expansions, or lake-like basins, sometimes 
fifty miles long and half as wide, sometimes of much 
smaller dimensions, all of which are united by narrow 
intervening glens. The flanks of these expansions con- 
sist of terraced " intervales," or river flats, consisting 
of fertile alluvial soil. These were laid down by the 
river itself during the " Champlain Period " of American 
geologists, concerning which more hereafter, and their 
regular outlines lend great beauty to the scenery, 
while their elevated and level surfaces offer strikingly 
picturesque sites for towns. 

The course of the river through these soft alluvial 
deposits is characterized by bold and nearly uniform 
curves. Its banks are ornamented with a fringe of fine 
trees and shrubs, while the intervales themselves are, for 
the most part, meadows. Almost any crop, however, can 
be grown in their kindly loams, and hence, the long 



i66 " A HORDE OF INDUSTRIAL INVADERS?' 

stretches of grass are frequently broken by fields, exhibit- 
ing all the varied productions of a genial climate and 
prolific soil. Meanwhile, the annual floods forbid fences 
in the lower bottoms, so that grass, corn, tobacco, orchard 
and forest divide these into great parallelograms, whose 
mathematical outlines alone suggest the hand of man 
in a scene where Nature herself seems to have turned 
farmer. 

The city of Holyoke, containing nearly twenty-two 
thousand inhabitants, is in some respects the most 
remarkable town in the State of Massachusetts, It was 
brought into existence some thirty-four years ago by 
the construction of a great dam across the Connecticut 
River, probably the boldest enterprise of this kind ever 
undertaken in America. Around the water-power thus 
obtained, which aggregates the force of thirty thousand 
horses, manufactories have sprung up with marvellous 
rapidity, while population, whose average rate of increase 
in Massachusetts generally is eighteen per cent, per 
decade, has doubled itself in Holyoke within the last ten 
years. 

The city is, however, chiefly remarkable for the extent 
of its foreign population. About half the people of Mas- 
sachusetts are of American, and half of alien birth, but 
eighty out of every hundred men, women and children, 
in Holyoke are of foreign extraction. The prevailing 
nationality is French-Canadian, people of whom we 
have hitherto seen nothing, but who, beginning to 



" A HORDE OF INDUSTRIAL INVADERS:' 167 

emigrate about twelve years ago, are now occupying one 
industrial centre after another in New England, even to 
the displacement of the Irish, who are already second 
in number to the French in Holyokd 

Our route, up to the present time, has, designedly, 
led us through such manufacturing towns as are distinc- 
tively American in character, using this term in the 
sense assigned to it before we commenced our journey. 
We have seen the descendants of the early colonists, 
the children of liberty and equality, suckled upon 
Puritan tradition, weaned in the free school, attaining 
manhood in the town meeting and experience in the 
exercise of public duties. We have followed them into 
the workshop, where, standing upon an admitted equality 
with their employers, the men who have not yet saved 
money make an unfettered bargain for their services with 
men who have ; basing the contract, by mutual consent, 
upon a comfortable and even refined ideal of operative 
life. We have entered these workmen's homes, talked 
with their wives and children, eaten, although we have 
not drunk with them, and noted their relations with their 
employers. We have visited the employer as well, and 
found his factory no money-mill and himself no absentee, 
but " head of the concern " in the same sense that the 
brain dominates a harmoniously working organization. 
Later on, we glanced for a moment at trades-unionism, 
attacking capital on the one hand, and the old equality 
between employer and employed on the other, and 



168 "A HORDE OF INDUSTRIAL INVADERS:' 

watched the origin, progress and fortunes of a strange 
and interesting industrial battle. We have now to 
follow a route where we shall find the conditions of 
labour approximating sensibly to those of Europe, and 
the question whether those conditions will ultimately 
dominate American industry or be themselves raised 
to native American standards is one that will hang long, 
if not altogether, in the balance. 

Meanwhile, let us take a glance at the great dam of 
Holyoke and the cotton, woollen and paper mills which 
have sprung up around it. The Connecticut River is 
nearly a third of a mile wide at Holyoke, upon whose 
site, before that city came into existence, occurred the 
falls of South Hadley, rapids having a descent of sixty 
feet, over which, until the year 1848, six thousand cubic 
feet of water, the equivalent of thirty thousand horse- 
power, ran to waste every second. In that year a small 
party of Boston adventurers incorporated themselves as 
the " Hadley Falls Company," with a capital of four 
million dollars, " for the purpose of constructing and 
maintaining a dam across the Connecticut River and 
one or more locks and canals, and of creating water- 
power to be used for manufacturing purposes," etc. 
Twelve months later, this work was completed, but 
scarcely were the sluice-gates, which had given passage 
to the stream during the construction of the dam, closed, 
than the whole structure was swept away by the rising 
river. 



" A HORDE OF INDUSTRIAL INVADERS:' 169 

Nothing daunted, the company, in the following year, 
built the present dam, which is a triumph of skill in the 
control of a magnificent natural power. Its length is 
1 01 7 feet, or nearly one-fifth of a mile, and its appearance 
that of an apron of massive timber-work, inclined towards 
the stream at a gentle slope, over whose upper edge the 
river flows. This wooden apron protects the dam proper, 
consisting of a ramp of masonry, having a base of a 
hundred feet, and rising forty feet above the bed of the 
river. During the construction of the dam, the stream was 
allowed to escape through some fifty sluice-gates, each 
about twenty feet square, and these, when the work was 
completed, were closed, for the first time, about noon of 
October 22, 1849. Thousands of spectators watched 
with eager interest the river creeping slowly upwards to 
the lip of the new work, and gathering into a broad lake 
behind it, until the water, finally, slid in a thin sheet 
down the slopes of the timber apron, when the cheers of 
the crowd went up exultingly. The dam has, since then, 
supported the weight of the greatest freshet ever known 
on the Connecticut River, while the evenness of the thin 
fluid film flowing over its crest is good evidence that no 
settlement has occurred or is in progress. 

But the company's work did not terminate with 
the building of the great dam. The fall acquired 
was sufficiently high to permit of its being divided, 
so to speak, into three stories. Three grand canals, 
each occupying a different level, were accordingly 



I70 "A HORDE OF INDUSTRIAL INVADERS:' 

dug and, of these, two send broad parallel water- 
courses a distance of two and a half, and one and a 
half miles respectively, through the very centre of the 
city, while the third skirts the Connecticut River. The 
mills on the upper level have a head of twenty feet, and 
their waste water passes into the second canal. Those 
upon this channel and others upon the third have a 
head of twelve feet, the mill-tails discharging into 
number three level in one case, and into the river in the 
other. From any of the numerous bridges which carry 
the city streets across these handsome canals, the eye 
takes in a long stretch of water-way, and if a rosy sunset 
dyes, or the full moon whitens the clear stream, only the 
great, but by no means ugly buildings, on its banks 
notify the manufacturing town to the spectator. The 
air is pure, the sky is azure, there, to the left, is the 
grand Connecticut River, a wide, silver lake above, a 
mad rapid below the great dam. Under his feet, slips 
a shining thread of water which, reflecting the waning 
sun or waxing moon, is none the less beautiful, pace Mr. 
Ruskin, because human genius, unravelling it from the 
greater strand twisted by Nature herself from rain-drops 
fallen on the flanks of the " long river," has therewith 
made a stitch or two in the harness which links the in- 
tellect and energy of man to the car of material progress. 
Like other saleable commodities, water-power has 
its own unit of measurement, called a "mill-power," 
equal to thirty-eight cubic feet of water drawn in 



"A HORDE OF INDUSTRIAL INVADERS P 171 

every second from a head of twenty feet, and the 
equivalent of sixty-five horse-powers. When a site 
for a factory has been taken from the company, who, it 
is understood, own all the lands adjacent to their water 
privileges, the requisite number of mill-powers is con- 
veyed to the occupant by an indenture of perpetual 
lease. The annual rental is three hundred dollars per 
mill-power, or something under twenty shillings per 
horse-power per annum, being less than a fourth the 
cost of the most economical form of steam-power. 

Cheapness of motive energy is the corner-stone of all 
the factories in Holyoke. These consist chiefly of 
cotton, woollen and paper mills, which, built in recent 
years, and for the purpose of using a predetermined 
amount of power, are little like the collections of 
unrelated and ramshackle buildings too often typical of 
a manufacturing district. Externally, there is some 
architectural dignity about all the Holyoke mills, and 
this is enhanced by their situation on the banks of wide 
and well-built canals. Internally, they are fitted with 
those appliances for safety, convenience, and even 
comfort, which form a marked feature of the New 
England factory. I do not, however, propose to enter 
any one of these hives, for most people are familiar with 
textile processes, and coming in contact here, for the 
first time, with French faces and the French tongue in 
the streets of an American city, curiosity is excited less 
by the mills than by the mill-hands. 



172 " A HORDE OF INDUSTRIAL INVADERS:' 

" Achetez vos hardes, faites a la maison populaire de 
Montague et Adams, 185, Rue High ; nous parlous tous 
fran9ais." Such was the first of many similar philological 
gems which I found, conspicuously posted on the blank 
walls and gables of Franco-American Holyoke. That 
Americans as well as Frenchmen are addressed by this 
advertisement, I gathered from its subjoined translation. 
•' Clothing, hats and fixings at Montague and Adams, 185, 
High Street." The presumably Norman Montague and 
undoubtedly Yankee Adams have succeeded, the one 
with Latin ornament, the other with Saxon simplicity, 
in symbolizing the city of their adoption by a single 
poster. Holyoke is evidently a town of Frenchmen 
first, and Americans afterwards, and both are of the 
class that wears ready-made clothes. 

Pleasure, like business, addresses its clients with 
two tongues in this curious Franco-American town. 
Thus, " M. le Professeur Bartholomew " announces the 
arrival of his " Chevaiix de Manege, Le Paraadox 
Equine, visits pendant plus que trois mois a Boston par 
121,209 de son peuple le plus cultive. Patronise par- 
tout, par cette classe des personnes trouve au theatre sur 
des occasions speciaux seulement." And, afterwards, as 
follows : — " Pj'ofessor Bartholomew s Educated Horses, The 
Equine Paraadox, {sic) visited during a three months' 
stay in Boston by 121,209 of its most cultivated people. 
Patronized everywhere by a class of people found at the 
theatre only on very special occasions." Aside from its 



"A HORDE OF INDUSTRIAL INVADERS:' 173 

delicious incongruity, which never startles in America, 
tlie home of incongruity, how oddly it reads, this appeal 
of the Yankee showman, the companion, though not the 
child of puritanical ideas, from the evils of the stage, 
addressed to Frenchmen ! 

The Canadian French were recently described, in 
a grave State paper,* as " the Chinese of the Eastern 
States. They care nothing for our institutions, civil, 
political, or educational. They do not come to make 
a home among us, to dwell with us as citizens and 
so become a part of us ; but their purpose is merely 
to sojourn a few years as aliens, touching us only at 
a single point, that of work, and when they have 
gathered out of us what will satisfy their end, to get 
them away to whence they came and bestow it there. 
They are a horde of industrial invaders, not a stream of 
stable settlers. Voting, with all that it implies, they care 
nothing about. Rarely does one of them become 
naturalized. They will not send their children to school 
if they can help it, but endeavour to crowd them into 
the mills at the earliest possible age. When, at length, 
they are cornered by the school officers and there is no 
escape, often they scrabble together what few things 
they have and move away to some place where, being 
unknown, they hope to escape the schools entirely and 
keep the children at work right on in the mills. And 
when, as is indeed sometimes the case, any of them are 
* Thirteenth Annual Report of the Massachusett^ Labour Bureau, 1SS2. 



1/4 "A HORDE OF INDUSTRIAL INVADERS y 

so situated that they cannot escape at all, then the stolid 
indifference of the children wears out the teacher with 
what seems an idle task. 

" These people have one good trait. They are 
indefatigable workers, and docile. All they ask is to 
be set to work, and they care little who rules them, 
or how they are ruled. To earn all they can, by no 
matter how many hours of toil, to live in the most 
beggarly way, so that out of their earnings they may 
spend as little as possible, and to carry out of the 
country what they can thus save ; this is the aim of 
the Canadian French in our factory districts. Inci- 
dentally they must have some amusements, and, so 
far as the males are concerned, drinking, smoking and 
lounging constitute the sum of these." 

These sweeping statements had scarcely issued from 
the Labour Bureau before they were met by earnest 
denials from the Canadian French of New England, 
who, at various public meetings, passed resolutions of 
so vigorous and condemnatory a character that these, 
reaching the State Legislature, were referred by it to 
the Bureau for an answer. In the result, a public 
hearing of the French in their own cause was appointed, 
but we need not follow this inquiry beyond the point 
where it enables us to get a good view of the problem 
I am anxious to elucidate, and which I will here re-state. 
Are the old labour conditions of America beginning to 
approximate to those of Europe, and, if so, what 
influences are at work to prc\-ent this lapse .'' 



" A HORDE OF INDUSTRIAL INVADERS:^ 175 

. The Canadian " habitan," as he is seen at home, is 
a peasant proprietor, farming a few acres, living parsi- 
moniously, marrying early, and producing a large family, 
who, if they would not sink into penury, must either 
subdue the distant and stubborn forests of the in- 
clement north, or become factory operatives in the 
States. They are a simple, kindly, pious and cheerful 
folk, with few wants, less energy and no ambition ; 
well-mannered and well-conducted, but ignorant and 
credulous ; the children of a Church which teaches satis- 
faction rather than dissatisfaction with an humble lot, 
and devoted to the priest, who is their oracle, friend and 
guide in all the relations of life. Such are the people, 
a complete contrast in every respect with Americans, 
who began, only twelve years ago, to emigrate to the 
industrial centres of New England, seeking employment 
in the mills. They came, not only intending to return 
to their own country after having saved money enough 
to buy a patch of cleared land, but expressly enjoined 
by the Church to do so. Employers of labour, however, 
soon found out the value of the new-comers, and Yankee 
superintendents preferred them as operatives before any 
other nationality, not only on account of their tireless 
industry and docility, but because they accepted low 
wages without grumbling, and kept themselves clear of 
trade organizations. Hence, it was not long before the 
mill-owners themselves began to organize the Canadian 
immigration, appointing agents to procure French 



176 "A HORDE OF INDUSTRIAL INVADERS:' 

labour, and importing, sometimes, as many as fifty 
families at once into a town. 

Thus, it has come about that nearly seventy per 
cent, of the cotton operatives of Holyoke are of 
French-Canadian origin, a fact which obtrudes itself 
on the notice of visitors in a variety of ways. The 
streets are, every evening, crowded with French faces, 
and resound with the French tongue. " Ici on parle 
Francais " appears in most of the shop windows. Groups 
of male loungers laugh and smoke at every street corner. 
The billiard- and beer-saloons are full of noisy players 
and drinkers. Girls, less trim and less demure than 
those we have hitherto seen, but smarter far than any 
Lancashire mill-hands, trip, by twos and threes, from 
shop to shop, or greet passing friends with gay French 
phrases. The general behaviour is, however, most 
decorous, even a social observer's eye failing to detect 
any signs of immorality. By ten o'clock, indeed, the 
busy street life is hushed and, half an hour after, Holyoke 
is as quiet as a country village. 

Passing from the main thoroughfares of the city into 
the streets where labour resides, we at once became 
conscious of a great contrast with similar quarters in the 
industrial towns of Western Massachusetts and Connecti- 
cut. The Water-Power Company owns not only all the 
ground available for mills, but much besides. Hence, 
land is dear, and tenement houses the rule. These 
consist of great blocks, five stories high, constructed 



" A HORDE OF INDUSTRIAL INVADERS:' 177 

in " flats," and inhabited by many families. They are 
built by the mill-owners, who charge twenty-five shillings 
a month for each suite of rooms, a rent which yields 
only a moderate interest upon an outlay undertaken for 
the sake of conveniencing labour. 

Fresh from the white cottage-homes and green gardens 
of the Dalton operatives, and still almost in view of the 
charming school children of Great Harrington, what was 
our surprise and disappointment at the first view of 
a French-Canadian quarter ! A narrow, unclean street, 
gloomy by reason of the great brick barracks on its 
either side, was resonant with the shrill voices of 
children playing, so to speak, in the gutters. Almost 
every boy and girl was bare-legged and bare-footed, rags 
were by no means scarce, while the dirt of hands, feet 
and faces was such as bespeaks no daily wash. The 
open windows of every flat offered glimpses of bare and 
grimy interiors, overcrowded with slovenly people, either 
" pigging together " at supper, or leaning, untidy and 
idle, over the window-sills. Turning from a scene 
whose outward appearance spoke, if not of the worst, 
yet of very low conditions of life, we sought another 
street, only to meet with the same experience, while 
the question, " What does all this portend for the 
future of labour in America .'' " sprang into instant and 
peremptory existence in our minds. 

The average number of persons living in each house 
in the State of Massachusetts is rather more. than six, 

N 



I7S "A HORDE OF INDUSTRIAL INVADERS:' 

but the number of inmates sheltered under one roof in 
such typical American towns as Dalton and Great Bar- 
rington, is only five and a half. The average size of the 
family, again, in each of these towns, as in New England 
generally, is four and three quarter persons, so that 
almost every family in Dalton and Great Barrington 
lives under its own roof-tree. In Holyoke, on the 
other hand, the average number of inhabitants per 
house is eleven ; in other words, there is only one 
dwelling for every two families in this city. Now, bear- 
ing in mind that the French, although the dominating 
nationality, form less than a fourth of the total popula- 
tion of Holyoke, we realize how these people herd in 
learning that their presence, to the number of five thou- 
sand, among twenty-two thousand men, women and 
children, has doubled the average rate of inhabitancy 
of the whole town. 

Overcrowding is not the only evil which threatens 
the condition of American labour in Holyoke. Illiteracy 
characterizes the French operatives almost equally 
with herding, and is more difficult to deal with in 
their case than in that of many other immigrant 
races. Aside from the barrier which a strange tongue 
places between French children and American schools, 
the Canadian is a good Catholic, and very loyal to 
his Church. The priest, on the other hand, is not less 
anxious for the religious teaching of the youth than for 
the growth and prosperity of the expatriated flock under 



"A HORDE OF INDUSTRIAL INVADERS P 179 

his charge. Hence, instead of making use of the com- 
mon school, that root of good citizenship, equally with 
intelligence, these two bend all their energies to the 
establishment of " parochial schools " which, however they 
may benefit the cause of the Church, will certainly do 
little for education, in the American sense of the word. 

I purpose, as I have already said, no critical examina- 
tion of the Canadian question, or any attempt to estimate 
the value of the French reply to the indictment against 
them which I' have already quoted. It is sufficient for 
my purpose to show that operative life in Holyoke 
is a very different thing from what it is in Western 
Massachusetts, and a sad lapse from American ideals. 
That employers should desire to obtain help which 
is at once satisfactory and cheap is much the same 
thing as their being anxious to buy good cotton at low 
rates, and might pass without remark in any country 
except America. But American equality has only one 
ideal of life, and to be an intelligent and a good citizen 
is as necessary for the poor as for the rich man in a 
State where, by the theory of the constitution, each 
individual is a factor in the sovereignty of the people. 
Hence, it is with a feeling of alarm that the European 
observer sees the dignity of labour down in the very dust 
at Holyoke, and asks — Does no one concern himself about 
a state of things that would have shocked all America 
thirty years ago, and been quite impossible half a 
century back ? 



I So "A HORDE OF INDUSTRIAL INVADERS." 

More than one cheering answer is, however, at hand. 
The very report from which I have quoted, hardly as it 
deals with French-Canadian character, is no denuncia- 
tion of these people, no cry, such as that raised against 
the Chinese, for disability or dismissal. On the contrary, 
it is an appeal and a warning to the American people. 
This new flood of alien immigrants, having many ex- 
cellent qualities, but without ideals, ambitions, or any due 
sense of the dignity of labour, is sweeping, not into the 
great West, where conflict with nature regenerates 
character, but into high-souled and intelligent New 
England, the home of pure and enlightened demo- 
cracy, the very heart of America. There, the new- 
comers are congregating in the same mills whose 
operatives. New England's own children, were, forty 
years ago, the wonder and admiration of Europe. 
Herding in crowded tenement houses, slovenly, ragged 
and dirty, the French operatives of Holyoke seem to 
eat, drink and breed without a thought of any higher 
life save, perhaps, that of which the priest tells them on 
the sabbath. It is nothing less than a social revolution 
which has occurred in the American dominions of King 
Cotton since Harriett Martineau and Charles Dickens 
told the world what the inner life of the Lowell factories 
was like. 

But the State cries aloud, by the very report in 
question, to the consciences of the American people, 
reminding them of their principles, and calling for the 



"A HORDE OF INDUSTRIAL INVADERS:' i8r 

aid of all patriotic souls in turning this muddy but 
manageable stream of toil into the channels of educa- 
tion, nationalization, and public duty. Nor is the school 
less active in the same cause. The merry street crowds 
were at their thickest one evening in Plolyoke, when, 
attracted by the sounds of singing, I entered the hand- 
some city hall, where the common-school children of 
the town were holding their annual musical festival. 
An immense orchestra, filled with nearly four hundred 
boys and girls, occupied one end of the room, 
which was crowded with an audience of a thousand 
people, respectable, well-dressed and well-behaved mill- 
hands, the parents and relatives of the little performers 
on the stage. Although admission was free, there was 
not a shabby or noisy person present, and the gather- 
ing had that remarkable air of independence which 
always strikes an Englishman as a most character- 
istic feature of an American crowd. Scattered among 
the choir, the acute but genial faces of many a school- 
master and " school-marm " shone upon the children. 
Grave, and grey-headed, but kindly looking men and 
women, some of these, whose very gravity bespoke 
their sense of serving an important cause. And there 
were younger teachers, too, bright, trim girls, who kept 
order, where order seemed to keep itself, by the magic 
which is a secret of the American common-school. 

I don't know who more enjoyed the songs and 
choruses, the singers or their audience ; but I do know 



i82 " A HORDE OF INDUSTRIAL INVADERS:' 

that, for me, haunted by after-images of the squalor I 
had just witnessed, it was, beyond measure, inspiriting 
to see the quick uprise of the well-dressed and well- 
drilled rows of children, to hear their trained voices 
pealing joyously forth, and to watch the well-pleased 
faces of their listening fathers and mothers. I went 
out, when it was all over, into the pure moonlit 
air of a perfect May night, and watched the crowd 
of happy parents and happier children, parting, group 
from group, with laughter and kindly farewells. They, 
I felt sure, would not scatter to homes such as those 
I have described, but to roofs which worthily, if modestly, 
shelter so many of the sons of toil in this, the chosen 
country of labour. 

To " make Americans " of the alien races which pour 
in such numbers upon her shores is the acknowledged task 
of the pulpit, the common-school, and the democratic 
institutions of the States. Neither of these have any 
disposition to shirk work which, properly speaking, is 
not theirs alone. What part is the American employer 
taking or about to take in this the most momentous of 
all questions for the United States .? It is impossible 
certainly to say. In Holyoke, indeed, he appears chiefly 
in the character of a labour-importer ; but we have 
already seen him, and shall soon again see him, as 
much alive as the State, the pulpit, or the school, both 
to the importance of the problem, and his large share 
of responsibility for its solution. 



CHAPTER XI. 

THE REGICIDE JUDGES — BIRDS AND TRAPS — THE 
HIGHER EDUCATION OF WOMEN. 

The twin villages of Hadley and South Hadley, in 
the vicinity of Holyoke, have each an interest of 
their own which must not be overlooked. Goffe and 
Whalley, two of the so-called "regicide judges" who 
condemned Charles I. to the scaffold, succeeded, upon 
the restoration of the monarchy, in escaping from 
England to America, while the remainder of their 
colleagues were apprehended and executed as traitors. 
Landing at Boston in the summer of 1660, the fugitives 
took up their residence at Cambridge, but finding the 
neighbourhood of Boston unsafe, they left it in the 
following year for Newhaven. Here, they were well 
treated by the minister and magistrates, and, for some 
time, thought themselves out of danger ; but, upon the 
news that the king had proclaimed them being brought 
to the town, they were obliged to abscond. Towards 
the end of March in the same year, however, they 



1 84 THE REGICIDE JUDGES. 

returned and lay concealed in the house of Mr. Daven- 
port, the minister, for a month. Learning that he was 
threatened for concealing and comforting traitors, they 
generously resolved to give themselves up to the authori- 
ties. The deputy-governor, however, on being informed 
of their whereabouts, took no steps to secure them, so, 
having first shown themselves publicly in Newhaven, in 
order to clear Mr. Davenport from suspicion, they con- 
cealed themselves in a rock-shelter near the city, which 
still goes by the name of the "Judges' Cave." Here 
they were daily supplied with food by a Mr. Richard 
Sperry, no friend of kings, who sometimes carried 
provisions himself, sometimes sent them by his boys, 
with directions to leave the packet on a certain stump 
from which the judges took it. Driven from this shelter 
by the attacks of panthers, they found a more secure 
refuge in a valley not far from the Judges' Cave, and 
here, or in similar hiding-places, they passed four 
miserable years. 

During this time they had many apparently narrow 
escapes from being captured, either by the king's com- 
missioners or the local authorities, and they would 
undoubtedly have been taken but that the latter, sympa- 
thizers with the Puritan rather than the kingly cause, 
were more anxious to screen than to arrest the judges. 
Thus, one day, when the pursuers were expected at New- 
haven, Goffe and Whalley walked out from their shelter 
along the road by which they must enter the town. 



THE REGICIDE JUDGES. 185 

Here they were overtaken by the sheriff, who, exhibiting 
a warrant for their apprehension, made a show of taking 
them prisoners. Thereupon the judges stood upon their 
defence, and, planting themselves back to back, so 
defended themselves with their sticks that they repelled 
the officer, who went into town to obtain assistance, and 
upon his return found they had escaped into the woods. 

On another occasion, when the commissioners were 
searching the town, the judges, shifting their quarters, 
found themselves, either by accident or design, at the 
house of a lady, who concealed them in one apartment 
while she received the commissioners in another, putting 
the latter politely and skilfully upon a wrong scent. 
While the pursuit was at its hottest, the minister, Mr. 
Davenport, took occasion to unite the people of New- 
haven in caution and concealment by a sermon preached 
from the following text of Isaiah : " Take counsel, 
execute judgment ; make thy shadow as the night in the 
midst of noonday ; hide the outcasts ; betray not him that 
wandereth. Let mine outcasts dwell with thee, Moab ; 
be thou a covert to them from the face of the spoiler." 

In October, 1664, wearied out by a pursuit which the 
good-will of the people could only mitigate, Goffe and 
Whalley gave the king's commissioners a final slip and 
set out for Hadley. Travelling at night and faith- 
fully guided, they reached the house of Mr. Russell, the 
minister of the village, after a difficult journey of a 
hundred miles. The house of this friendly clergyman 



i86 THE REGICIDE JUDGES. 

had been specially and ingeniously fitted up for their 
reception. In the chamber assigned to them was a 
closet communicating by a trap and staircase with the 
cellar below, into which it was easy to descend, leaving 
no evidence of flight. Here, unknown to the people of 
Hadley, saving a few confidants and the family of Mr. 
Russell, the judges remained for fifteen or sixteen years, 
and here Whalley died in 1679. Soon after Whalley's 
death, Goffe left Hadley, after which no certain infor- 
mation of him can be obtained. There is, however, a 
tradition that he also died at Hadley, and was buried in 
the garden of a Mr. Tilton, one of the few persons 
besides the minister who knew of the refugees' presence. 
The judges were gentlemen of worth, of dignified 
manners and appearance, commanding universal respect, 
and highly esteemed by the colonists for their unfeigned 
piety. Both had been generals in Cromwell's army, and 
both were renowned for their skill with the small sword, 
as the following story illustrates. While the judges 
were at Boston, there came to the town an English 
fencing-master, who, challenging all comers, could find 
no rival with the rapier. At length, one of the judges, 
disguised in rustic dress, holding a cheese in one hand, 
and a dirty mop in the other, mounted the stage. The 
swordsman laughed at him and bid him begone, but the 
j udge stood his ground, whereupon the Englishman made 
a pass at him to drive him away. The sword was received 
in the cheese and the mop drawn over the master's face 



THE REGICIDE JUDGES. 187 

in such a way as to give him a pair of whiskers. Making 
a second pass, the blade was again caught in the same 
way, while the mop was now drawn gently over the eyes. 
At a third lunge, it was once more held by the cheese 
until the judge had rubbed the mop all over his opponent's 
face. Thereupon, letting fall his rapier, the swordsman 
angrily snatched up a cutting blade, when the seeming 
countryman exclaimed, " Stop, sir ; hitherto, you see 
I have only played with you, but if you come at me now 
with the broad-sword, know that I will certainly take 
your life." The firmness with which he spoke struck 
the master of fence, who said, " Who can you be ? Either 
Goffe, Whalley, or the devil, for there was no other man 
in England that could beat me." 

The following story of the judges was handed down 
orally among the inhabitants of Hadley for many years. 
" In the course of Philip's war, which involved almost all 
the Indian tribes in New England, the inhabitants of 
Hadley thought it proper to hold the ist of September, 
1675, as a day of fasting and prayer. While they 
were in church they were surprised by a band of savages. 
The people instantly betook themselves to arms, which, 
according to the custom of the times, they carried 
with them to church, and, rushing out of the house, 
attacked their invaders. The panic was, however, so 
great and the numbers so unequal, that they fought 
doubtfully at first, and in a short time began evidently 
to give way. 



1 88 THE REGICIDE JUDGES. 

" At this moment, an ancient man with hoary locks, 
of a most venerable and dignified aspect, and in a dress 
widely differing from that of the inhabitants, appeared 
suddenly at their head, and with a firm voice and an 
example of undaunted resolution reanimated their spirits, 
led them again to the conflict, and totally routed the 
savages. When the battle was ended, the stranger dis- 
appeared, and no person knew whence he had come or 
whither he had gone. The relief was so timely, so 
sudden, so unexpected, and so providential, the appear- 
ance and the retreat of him who furnished it was so 
unaccountable, his person was so dignified and com- 
manding, his resolution so superior, and his interference 
so decisive, that the inhabitants, without any uncommon 
exercise of credulity, readily believed him to be an angel, 
sent by Heaven for their preservation. Nor was this 
opinion seriously controverted until it was discovered 
several years afterwards that Goffe and Whalley had been 
lodged in the house of Mr. Russell. Then it became 
known that their deliverer was General Goffe." 

From Mount Holyoke, on the left bank of the 
Connecticut River, and a few miles south of Hadley, is 
seen the finest prospect in New England. At this point 
the stream breaks through the range of trap hills 
forming its western boundary, and upon either side 
of the breach stands Mount Holyoke and Mount Tom 
respectively, the highest crests in the whole basaltic 
line. The summit of the former mountain is about 



BIRDS AND TRAPS. 189 

a thousand feet above the river, and thence, the 
eye, looking south, is presented with a vast expansion 
embracing sixty miles of the river's course, the ranges 
which bound it on either side, and an extent of farms, 
fields, forests, villages, churches, hills, valleys and plains, 
such as can scarcely be imagined. Looking north, it 
travels over a basin, twenty miles long and fifteen miles 
wide, with the Green Mountains sweeping around its 
western, and the Lyme range around its eastern rim, and 
then fading away in the distance, while, on either hand, 
lie a number of towns beautifully disposed on the flanks 
of the stream. 

But the river itself, with its splendid curves and mar- 
gins of cultivated land, forms the finest part of the scenery. 
It here turns four times to the east and three times to the 
west within twelve miles and, in that distance, makes a 
progress of only twenty-four miles. One almost circular 
sweep, called the " Ox-bow," performs a circuit of three 
miles without advancing its course towards the ocean 
by a hundred rods. The intervales which border these 
graceful turns are disposed in terraces, rising one above 
the other as they recede from the river. Their well-tilled 
surfaces are chequered by an immense number of fields, 
separated from each other by imaginary lines only, 
and crops of meadow-grass give way, successively, to 
forest, barley, maize, apple-orchards and tobacco. Such 
is the appearance of the existing Connecticut valley, a 
startling contrast in every respect to that which it 



I90 BIRDS AND TRAPS. 

presented in those triassic times of whose strange birds 
and reptiles it contains so many interesting records. 

Eighty years ago, a student of WilHams College, 
named Pliny Moody, while ploughing on his father's 
farm at South Hadley, turned over a slab of sandstone, 
whose under surface appeared as if marked with the 
tracks of a bird. This at once attracted Moody's 
attention, for there was little geological knowledge 
in those days, and he, like every one else, believed 
that the solid strata of the earth had been called 
suddenly into being without passing through any form- 
ative process. But the student's common-sense told 
him that the footprints in question were probably made 
at a time when the sandstone was plastic and, having 
heard of but one period of aqueous deposition, he con- 
cluded that Noah's raven had wandered about the Con- 
necticut valley in search of dry land, at the moment 
when this particular slab emerged, soft and dripping, 
from the waters of the Deluge. 

Thirty-five years later, as Mr. Draper, who lived at 
Greenfield, thirty miles farther north, was returning one 
Sunday from church, his attention was directed to some 
large paving-stones, which also exhibited bird-tracks, 
and, turning to his wife, he at once remarked, " My dear, 
there are some turkey-tracks made three thousand years 
ago." Well, we cannot even yet, with all our geological 
knowledge, date the many similar indications of avian 
and reptilian life which have been found so abundantly in 



BIRDS AND TRAPS. 191 

the sandstones of this locality, but at least we know that 
neither raven nor turkey walked the shores of the Con- 
necticut River at the time in question, for neither of these 
highly organized birds had yet come into existence. 

The Connecticut valley in triassic times, was an 
estuary thirty or forty miles wide, covered with still and 
shallow waters. Over its wide shores, great reptiles 
and strange birds wandered, leaving footprints which, 
under favourable circumstances, were covered up with 
mud or sand, and so preserved. The whole area was, 
at the time, slowly subsiding, so that strata containing 
these " fossil footprints," as they are now called, got 
piled one upon the other to a depth of some five thou- 
sand feet. Every page in this great book is illustrated 
with fragmentary pictures of the strange creatures living 
at the time in question, and it has long been the business 
of science to infer the outward forms of these animals 
from such marks as those which were first observed by 
Pliny Moody. 

Almost all of them were reptiles, although differing 
utterly from anything we know by that name in the 
present day. Some, the labyrinthodonts, were bipeds, 
having feet twenty inches long, a stride of a yard, and 
tall enough to look over a twelve-foot wall. Others, 
the deinosaurs, had three-toed, bird-like hind feet, and 
smaller, four-toed fore feet, and they, while generally 
walking like quadrupeds, could raise themselves erect and 
march off like gigantic birds. Still other saurians flew 



192 THE HIGHER EDUCATION OF WOMEN. 

through the air or swam in the waters of the estuary, 
while such birds as accompanied the former were as yet 
httle more than improved reptiles. They measured 
height with the amphibians, outreaching them by their 
longer necks, and had long legs, like an ostrich, toothed 
jaws and lizard-like tails. Many of them were of im- 
mense size, and one at least must have been larger than 
the great New Zealand Moa, or Dinornis, a bird for 
whose Q^^ a hat would make a good egg-cup. 

After these strange animals had flourished through 
the immense period of time necessary for the deposition 
of such a thickness of sandstone as that in which their 
footprints occur, reptilian supremacy came to a violent 
end in the Connecticut valley. A series of volcanic 
eruptions shook the entire district. The level sandstone 
strata were upheaved and cracked in every direction 
and, from the fissures, there issued innumerable streams 
of lava. These, afterwards cooled into the basaltic 
ridges which now hem in the Connecticut River on the 
west ; ridges from whose crests the traveller overlooks 
a scene impossible to match in New England, and 
difficult to rival in the world. 

Mount Holyoke, one of these trap hills, has given 
its name to the female seminary, founded by Miss Mary 
Lyon, in 1837, for the higher education of women. 
Little attention was given, fifty years ago, to the pre- 
paration of women for their various useful and even 
noble duties, while, for their talents and energy, there 



THE HIGHER EDUCATION OF WOMEN. 193 

was neither training or openings. The curriculum of a 
finished education comprehended Httle more than the 
three R's, a superficial knowledge of French, music and 
drawing, a smattering of polite literature, and some skill 
in dancing. Accomplishments were all that the young 
women, whether of England or America, inherited, half 
a century ago, on the passing away of their school life. 
This bequeathed no legacy of domestic knowledge to the 
married, no resources from ennui to such girls as remained 
at home and single, and no marketable acquirements to 
those who wished to earn a living for themselves. 

It was against an education of this kind and the 
aimless indifferentism of character which it produces ; 
against the want of earnest womanhood and of high 
ideals, that Miss Lyon entered her protest, and to remedy 
which she devoted her life. Wc have not time even to 
glance at her arduous, early labours, but their results 
are visible at South Hadley in a great group of hand- 
some buildings, standing retired in romantic grounds, 
and overlooking the beautiful Connecticut valley. 

About three hundred young ladies are now receiving 
an education of the highest class at Mount Holyoke 
Seminary. Candidates for admission to the junior 
classes must be, at least, sixteen years of age, and arc 
preferred at seventeen or eighteen. They must be 
exceptionally well taught in order to pass the entrance 
examination, and the regular course of instruction after- 
wards occupies four years. 

O 



194 THE HIGHER EDUCATION OF WOMEN. 

Nothing can be more happy than the general 
arrangements of this great school-college. The means 
and appliances of study arc perfect and ample, the 
organization is excellent, the management methodic and 
efficient, the life of the students both simple and refined. 
The class and lecture rooms, library, laboratory, museum, 
and biological, geological and botanical collections are 
worthy of a great university. So also is the observatory, 
with its Alvan Clark equatorial refractor, meridian circle, 
sidereal clock, and electrically recording chronograph. 
Its curriculum again, whether of classical, mathematical, 
literary, or scientific studies, has an university scope, 
while its staff of professors includes some thirty women 
of rare scholarship and educational experience, aided by 
half-dozen or more lecturers on history, science and art, 
including men of such distinction as Professor Young, 
the astronomer, and Professor Hitchcock, the geologist. 

But Mount Holyoke Seminary is not simply an 
advanced school or college. Miss Lyon's leading idea 
was to equip her girl-students with something more than 
knowledge. She did not think that young people 
should be left to themselves morally at an age when 
they still require years of intellectual training, and her 
great aim was to form the character while informing the 
mind. With this view, she based school upon family 
life. Teachers and students live together, read and re- 
create together, as well as work together. Family and 
school are so organized as to form parts of the same 



THE HIGHER EDUCATION OF WOMEN. 195 

whole, each advancing the interests of the other, and 
both uniting to promote the improvement, comfort and 
happiness of the household, which is bound together by 
the family tic, rather than kept together by restriction. 

Much more than this, however. There is not a 
single domestic servant resident in the school, and, 
saving cooking and scrubbing, the whole work of the 
house is performed by the students themselves. Every 
girl spends an hour a day in some defined service, and 
as many hands make light work, while the labourer 
himself best knows how to economize labour, it is not 
surprising to find Mount Holyoke Seminary distinguished 
by neatness as great and cleanliness as thorough as 
that of the Shakers themselves. Withal, it is no part 
of the founder's design to teach young ladies the 
domestic arts. This branch of a woman's education is 
exceedingly important, but a literary institution is not 
the place to give it. Home is the school, and the 
mother the teacher of domestic economy. Servants 
were dispensed with at Mount Holyoke solely for 
economical reasons in the first place, but experience 
has shown that valuable results in the development of 
character are obtained by making every one in turn the 
servant of all. Hence, the " domestic system " has been 
retained, although the liberality of individuals has placed 
the work which Miss Lyon commenced beyond the need 
of such minute economy as the non-employment of 
servants. 



196 THE HIGHER EDUCATION OE WOMEN. 

And now, what do the refined and lady-Hkc girls 
whom I saw at work in the class-room, the laboratory 
and the museum ; reading in the library, or strolling 
through the grounds ; the daughters of farmers, traders 
and professional men, pay for their excellent training. 
Just one hundred and seventy-five dollars per annum ? 
inclusive of every expense. It is as if Girton or Somer- 
ville Hall opened their doors to students for thirty-five 
pounds a year ! 



CHAPTER XII. 

HARTFORD — SILK — " A CREAMERY." 

Hartford, the capital of the State of Connecticut, 
is not so much a manufacturing city as the centre of 
an immense banking and insurance business. It is, 
besides, one of the prettiest and pleasantest residential 
towns in New England, the wide avenues of its 
charming suburbs being bordered with some of the 
most tasteful homes in the United States. No reader 
would pardon me if I omitted to say that here 
dwells the immortal Mark Twain, in a quaint house 
of his own building, situated on Farmington Avenue. 
Near him lives Dudley Warner, who must certainly 
have gained his experience of " pusley " in some garden 
less trim than his own. The word reminds me that, 
in the matter of gardens, Hartford is a long way 
ahead of most American towns. The Yankee does not 
usually shine as a horticulturist, contenting himself 
with a lawn and some shade trees, and rarely making 
a garden, in the English sense of the word. Here, 



198 HARTFORD — SILK — " A CREAMERY:' 

however, he beds out, plants and cultivates under glass, 
with the assiduity of a suburban Londoner. 

The city lies upon the Connecticut River, occupying 
a site which was once warmly competed for by the 
English and Dutch. The latter, as we have already 
seen, were the first of the two peoples to explore this 
important stream, but a party of Plymouth adventurers 
succeeded in buying some land on its banks from the 
Indians before the Dutch had followed up their dis- 
coveries by making a settlement. Thereupon, the Dutch 
acquired of a chief named Sassacus the spot where 
Hartford now stands, erected a trading-house Avhich 
they called the " House of Good Hope," built a small 
fort for its protection, armed this with two pieces of 
cannon, and then forbade the English from ascending 
the river to take possession of their purchase. This 
was in 1633, in the latter part of which year the 
Plymouth men sailed up the Connecticut River for the 
purpose of settling " Windsor " and building a trading- 
house on their land. At the point where Hartford now 
stands, they found their way opposed by the Dutch, who 
threatened to open fire from their little stronghold if 
the party attempted to proceed. But William Holmes, 
the leader of the English, was a bold and resolute man, 
so, taking no heed of threats, he pushed by the House 
of Good Hope, defying the Dutch guns, which, happily, 
kept silence. Thus was accomplished the settlement of 
Windsor. 



HARTFORD — SILK — " A CREAMERY:' 199 

Although New Amsterdam, the head-quarters of 
the Dutch, was much nearer than Plymouth, the English 
were the more enterprising people, and they soon began 
to come from Massachusetts Bay to the Connecticut 
River by land as well as by water. Whole churches 
formed little colonies and made their way through the 
forests which then covered the country, seeking to 
exchange the inhospitable soils of Massachusetts for 
the fertile bottoms of which they had heard from the 
Indians. 

In this way, the English settlement of Hartford was 
begun in 1635, although the main body of its first 
colonists did not arrive there till the following year. 
In June, 1636, the Rev. Thomas Hooker, a native 
of England, a graduate of Cambridge University, and 
a very remarkable man, left Boston for Hartford, with 
a party of some hundred men, women and children. 
They had no guide but the compass, and made their 
way through the primitive forest, and across swamps 
and rivers with the utmost difficulty. They drove their 
cattle before them, and lived chiefly on the milk of 
their cows. Each man carried his own pack on his 
back and his arms in his hands, while the journey of 
a hundred miles occupied them a fortnight. 

Such was the fashion in which the Puritans settled 
New England, and such were the schools in which 
character was formed in early colonial days. The 
minister led the flock and there followed him, no band 



200 HARTFORD — SILK — ''A CREAMERY." 

of hungry adventurers, but a godly company owning 
and relying upon the divine guidance, and often com- 
posed, as was particularly the case in the settlement 
of Hartford, of persons of figure, who had lived in 
honour and affluence in England, and who had previously 
been entire strangers to fatigues and dangers of all 
kinds. 

In all the annals of the American colonies, there is 
nothing more remarkable than the extent and perma- 
nence of the influence exercised on the future of settle- 
ments by the character of their early founders. The 
Rev. Thomas Hooker, " the father of Connecticut," as he 
was called, was one of that small number of men who 
are destined to have a great and good influence on the 
affairs of mankind. In the infant colony in question, 
his authority was, indeed, commanding. Little was 
done without his approbation, and everything which he 
approved was done as a matter of course. The measures 
which he caused to be adopted were such as stand the 
scrutiny of succeeding ages, and it is by no mere accident 
that the same moderation, wisdom and firmness which 
characterized all that Hooker did have remained con- 
spicuous in the public measures of Connecticut down 
to the present time. 

The lion of Hartford is " Charter Oak." The Puritan 
colonies had a great deal of trouble about their charters, 
or the parchments by which the British Government 
secured to the colonists the rigrht to make their own 



HARTFORD — SILK — ''A CREAMERY^ 2or 

laws and appoint their own magistrates. These were 
their protection against any injustice which governors 
coming from England might do them, whether by the 
limitation of religious liberty, the restriction of com- 
mercial freedom, or the invasion of personal rights. 
So anxious were the colonists to preserve these charters, 
that they would side neither with king nor Parliament 
during the civil war in England, fearing, if they became 
partisans of one cause, that the adherents of the other 
might oppress them if ever they came into power, and 
trying, therefore, to keep out of the war altogether, in 
order that they might hold fast to their charters. 

These, the English Government attempted several 
times to take away, and, finally, James II. sent out Sir 
Edmund Andros for this very purpose, with authority to 
act as the royal governor of all New England. He 
came to Boston with great pornp and state in 1686, and, 
soon after his arrival, both Massachusetts and Rhode 
Island submitted to his authority. But when he wrote 
to the colony of Connecticut requesting their charter, 
they refused to give it up. Thereupon, Sir Edmund, 
with his suite and some regular troops, came to Hart- 
ford, demanded the charter from the legislative assembly 
which was then sitting, and declared the government 
of this body at an end. 

The assembly, while it received the royal governor 
wdth every consideration, would pass no resolution to 
surrender or even, at first, produce the charter, and the 



202 HARTFORD — SILK — ''A CREAMERY." 

question was warmly debated between the legislature 
and Andros for an entire day. At length, night having 
fallen, the parchment was brought in and laid upon the 
table, but by this time numbers of the townspeople had 
assembled, and among them were men bold enough 
for any enterprise. Suddenly, a whistle was heard, 
and at the same moment every light in the room was 
extinguished. The crowd remained orderly and quiet, 
and presently the candles were officiously relighted, 
but the precious patent was gone, and no one knew 
who had taken it or where he had bestowed it. There- 
upon, after a stormy scene, Andros, in a rage, declared 
the government annulled and Connecticut annexed, b}' 
order of the king, to the other colonies which had 
already submitted to his rule. Calling for the record- 
book of the assembly, he wrote the word " finis " below the 
last entry in its pages, and so put an end, for ever as he 
thought, to the independent government of the colony. 

The charter was carried off under cover of the dark- 
ness by a Captain Wadsworth, of Hartford, who hid it 
in a hollow tree, fronting the house of Mr. Wyllys, a 
worthy magistrate, whence, within a few years, it was 
again taken to form once more the corner-stone of 
government in Connecticut. For, two years after this 
occurrence, the English revolution occurred, and was 
followed by a rebellion against the tyrannical royal 
governor of New England. When the men of Boston had 
thrown Sir Edmund xAndros into prison. Charter Oak 



HARTFORD — SILK — ''A CREAMERY:' 203 

gave up its hidden patent, and, at the same moment, the 
word " finis " was erased from the colonial records of 
Connecticut. 

James I., one of the most pedantic of men and 
stubbornest of kings, had, as everybody knows, an insane 
hatred of tobacco. But it is less generally known that 
this royal child of prejudice cherished an equally insane 
conviction that silkworms could be successfully reared 
in England ; or that he bent all the energy of his nature 
to bring this about. Absolute as he was, however, it 
goes without saying that he grew no English cocoons, 
but, by a curious interaction of the king's two crazes, 
these became the parents of the silk industries of 
America. 

In 1608, James commenced his attempts to compel 
the raising of silkworms in England, and it required 
fourteen years of costly failures to teach him that the 
thing was impossible. Meanwhile, the colony of Vir- 
ginia, chartered by the king in 1606, was becoming 
fairly prosperous through the cultivation of tobacco, 
which was, indeed, so largely grown that the price of 
everything in the colony, from the rector's salary to a pair 
of boots, was reckoned at so many pounds of tobacco. 

The failure of his English silk scheme gave the 
author of the " Counterblast " an opportunity to gratify 
his two master passions at one and the same time ; 
to cut up the culture of tobacco, root and branch, in 
Virginia, and to employ the colonists in rearing silk- 



204 HARTFORD— SILK— '' A CREAMERY:' 

worms for him. The times, it must be remembered were 
those when the mother-country regarded her colonies 
as existing solely for her advantage, so that James 
may, perhaps, be excused if he cared nothing about the 
effects of his policy on the prosperity of Virginia. What 
the royal protectionist did care for w^as to make English 
looms independent of foreign silk, and the Virginians 
dependent on the English market for the sale of their 
cocoons. With this view, he issued a series of peremptory 
orders. The culture of tobacco must be abandoned. 
The mulberry must be grown, and silkworms reared. 
The company who were managing the affairs of the 
colony must follow up his decrees by suitable legislation. 
These gentlemen answered the royal demands by 
imposing a fine of ten pounds upon every tobacco planter 
who did not cultivate at least ten mulberry trees for every 
hundred acres of his estate, and thus, in the course of 
a few years, small quantities of raw silk began to find 
their way from unwilling growers in Virginia to Eng- 
land. But, presently, came the English civil war ; the 
Stuarts disappeared, and Cromwell had enough on his 
hands without troubling himself about the cultivation of 
silk in a distant colony. In the mean time, and in spite 
of the " Counterblast," the Virginian tobacco trade was 
becoming more profitable than ever, so that if, during 
the hundred years next succeeding the civil war, some 
delegate to the colonial assembly would now and then 
appear in a waistcoat of home-grown silk, King James' 



HARTFORD — SILK — " y/ CREAMERY:' 205 

mulberry trees were almost all dead before the close of 
the seventeenth centiir}-. 

The seeds of a new industry had, however, been 
introduced into a country where industry germinates 
rapidly, and, in the course of the eighteenth century, 
every one of the colonies, from Massachusetts to 
Georgia, raised more or less silk. Most of the colonial 
governments, indeed, stimulated silk-culture by hand- 
some bounties, and, in Connecticut particularly, the 
growth of silk was general before and during the revo- 
lution, surviving, indeed, till as late as 1825. Many 
persons nov/ living remember groves of white mulberry 
trees, and rude w^ooden cocooneries where the women of 
the generation immediately following the revolution used 
to tend silk-worms. It was, however, impossible for this 
business to flourish in a country where energy could 
be applied with constantly increasing success to the 
growth of cereals and the raising of cattle. Hence, 
during the first quarter of this century, American silk- 
culture was everywhere languishing, even in Connecticut, 
until it was suddenly revived by a remarkable but dis- 
astrous speculative movement, the result of two entirely 
independent stimuli. 

Early in 1830, the Lyons Chamber of Commerce 
published a very flattering report on the quality of some 
silk which had been reeled in Philadelphia, and in the 
same and following years, Congress, alarmed at the 
rapid growth of the silk imports, showed itself specially 



2o6 HARTFORD — SILK — ''A CREAMERY:' 

desirous of promoting the cause of silk-culture in 
America. The Secretary of the Treasury produced a 
very encouraging report on the subject, and, stimulated 
by this and French appreciation of American silk, 
every one was thinking and talking of how to revive 
and enlarge the business. 

All this excitement happened to coincide with the 
introduction of a new variety of the mulberry tree called 
Moms imilticaiiUs. An acre of Moms vudticatdis, it was 
said, would sustain silkworms enough to produce a 
hundred and twenty pounds of silk, worth, according to 
the Lyons report, twenty-five shillings a pound ; while the 
trees were declared well suited to the climate of New 
England and of remarkably rapid growth. Between 
1830 and 1839, when the bubble burst, the excitement 
about the new mulberry tree which was going to make 
everybody's fortune grew at a geometrical rate of 
progression. Cuttings, worth from twelve to twenty 
shillings a hundred in 1834, were sold for a hundred 
and twenty pounds in 1837, while, in the following year, 
single trees, once worth a few cents, were purchased at 
forty shillings a piece. One nurseryman, carried off his 
feet by the demand, sent an agent to France, with 
twenty thousand pounds in his pocket, and orders to buy 
a million trees ; but before these were delivered, the 
crash came, and Moms iimlticaulis was everywhere going 
begging for purchasers at as many cents as it had 
fetched pounds only a month before. 



HARTFORD — SILK — ''A CREAMERY:' 207 

Silk-culture in America never recovered from a blow 
which, however, did not entirely destroy the hopes of 
many patriotic men who, both in and out of Congress, 
had done much to encourage it. Those, however, who 
had been hardest hit now thought it best to begin the 
manufacture of silk goods with imported material, while 
a few still clung to the hope of growing raw silk in the 
country. The experience of more than two hundred 
years had, indeed, proved that excellent silk can be 
produced in the States, but, aside from the greater 
profitableness of simpler crops, America could not com- 
pete with the highly skilled and cheap labour of the 
Chinese in reeling the cocoons. This has always been, 
and still continues, an insurmountable obstacle to the 
production of raw silk in America, and when it was 
coupled, first with the mtdticaulis disaster and, lour years 
later, with a blight that affected all the mulberry trees 
in the States, the rearing of silkworms was practically 
abandoned. Thus expired, after an existence, rather 
than a life, of nearly two hundred and fifty years, the 
offspring of James I.'s two crazes, who, dying, left 
behind them a child of some promise, the silk spinning 
and weaving industries of America. 

It was during the fever fit of 1838-39 that the largest 
and most famous silk-mill in America came to the birth. 
The Cheney brothers were eight able sons of a Con- 
necticut farmer, and all of them in their boyhood had 
cultivated mulberry trees and reared some silkworms. 



2oS HARTFORD — SILK — ''A CREAMERY:' 

Early in 1838, four of them started a silk-mill at 
South Manchester, not far from Hartford, where, after 
suffering heavy losses from the nmlticmdis failure, they 
finally succeeded in becoming established as makers of 
substantial goods of inferior quality, woven by special 
machinery of their own devising from silk waste. 
They chose this class of work, in the first instance,. 
because American silk-mills were quite unable to com- 
pete with European manufacturers in the higher classes 
of fabrics at a time when the duty on imported silks was 
less protective than it is now. Their policy resulted 
in the contrivance of so many improvements in the 
machinery which had to be adapted to the spinning and 
weaving of floss that when the war tariff on silk rose, 
first to forty, and afterwards to sixty per cent, the 
Cheney brothers found themselves easily able to meet 
the severe home competition which followed, as a matter 
of course, upon the over-pampering of the industry in 
which they were engaged. Thus the house prospered 
and its business grew apace. The South Manchester 
mills were supplemented by others situated in Hartford 
itself, while the goods produced at both places were 
constantly improving in quality and in reputation. 

But it is not merely on account of its success and 
high standing that I make use of this firm as a figure- 
head for the silk trade of New England. Half a dozen 
pioneers, as energetic as the Cheneys themselves, had 
entered the same field of enterprise before they did, and 



HARTFORD — SILK — " A CREAMERVr 209 

a number of excellent men followed them. Of the former, 
a German, named Horstman, was the first to introduce 
the Jacquard loom into America in 181 5 ; while Samuel 
Whitemarsh, commencing ten years before the Cheneys, 
did perhaps more than any other man for the silk culti- 
vation and manufacture of America. But these brothers 
were very remarkable men, who conducted their factories 
upon purely democratic principles, and who, conse- 
quently, will form our first examples of a certain type 
of American employers, such as I promised we should 
find soon after leaving French-Canadiaif Holyoke. 

It is difficult for any one, acquainted only with the 
average factory, to picture the early manufacturing life of 
South Manchester. The mill-hands were intelligent and 
well-educated American girls, whose relations with their 
employers were those of unquestioned equality. Per- 
fect simplicity of life accompanied this democratic 
equality. The Cheneys worked shoulder to shoulder with 
their operatives, although at the study of foreign and 
improvement of home methods and machinery, instead 
of at the loom and spinning-frame. Contact betw^een 
employer and employed was free from any sense of 
caste distinctions, which, indeed, could have no exist- 
ence between class-mates of the common school, of 
whom, if some were gifted with more ingenuity or energy 
than others, all had from childhood stood upon the same 
social platform. 

Meanwhile, as the two great factories of Hartford 

P 



2IO HARTFORD — SILK — ''A CREAMERY:' 

and South Manchester grew, they became, almost as a 
matter of course, models of convenience and sanitary 
excellence. The latter village was specially designed to 
minister to the health, comfort, instruction and enjoy- 
ment of its people. The cottages for the married eni- 
ploycs have each ample room, a good garden, and a gas 
and water supply, while there are excellent boarding- 
houses for the single, or those who prefer not to keep 
house. There is not a fence in South Manchester, but 
the pretty white houses lie, like those of academic 
Williamstown, scattered v/ith regular irregularity about 
wide and tree-shaded lawns. There is a fine public 
hall, free library and reading-room, a first-rate school, 
an armoury for the military company, and ample accom- 
modation for religious worship, but, as a matter of 
course, no liquor saloons. 

If I speak of South Manchester as it is, and of its 
labour conditions as they were, it will be understood 
that the latter could not fail to become modified by 
the wave of foreign labour, which has risen almost as 
high in the silk as in the cotton mills of America since 
the Cheney brothers began business. The native 
American operatives with whom they were exclusively 
associated in the earlier years of their enterprise have 
now, for the most part, left the loom and the spinning- 
frame to become superintendents or masters, and their 
places have been largely taken by foreigners. For 
the improvement and welfare of these less-favoured 



HARTFORD — SILK — ''A CREAMERY:' i\i 

children of toil, however, the Cheneys acknowledge an 
even greater responsibility than in the case of their 
better-instructed predecessors, and, hence. South 
Manchester offers to its French-Canadian, Irish, or 
Italian operatives the best opportunities for becoming 
as intelligent men and women, as good citizens of the 
Republic, as worthy heads of families, and owners of as 
comfortable homes as the native help that went before 
them. 

We shall, indeed, presently sec that the great 
Connecticut silk-throwers do but typify a growing class 
of American employers, not, I am glad to say, confined 
to New England, who view with the utmost alarm the 
prospect of labour falling from its old and high estate 
in America. It is well to take the taste of the French- 
Canadian quarter at Holyoke out of the mouth, as soon 
as possible, with this cheering fact, but we shall better 
discuss the plans by which these patriotic captains of 
industry propose to meet a grave national danger after 
we have looked a little more closely into their details. 

Meanwhile, let us have the curiosity to inquire for a few 
moments why every grocer in this town of Hartford, as 
in New England generally, advertises "creamery butter" 
as the best, and why, in certain States, scarcely any 
dairy products are now made except in factories. Of 
these there are nearly four thousand in America, or one 
to every nine hundred milch cows in the dairy State 
of New York, whilst American creameries, altogether. 



212 HARTFORD — SILK — ''A CREAMERY:' 

employ a capital of two millions sterling, and eight 
thousand hands ; turn out five million pounds worth of 
milk, butter and cheese per annum, and are rapidly 
increasing in numbers. 

The Maple Farm, a few miles from Hartford, is an 
establishment of which we have, at present, scarcely 
any examples in England. There I drove, one lovel}- 
spring afternoon, our road to the butter factory now 
crossing the rich bottoms of the Connecticut River, now 
climbing over high basaltic ridges, whence the eye 
wandered widely over terraced intervales carpeted with 
variegated cropping. The beautiful " swallow-tail " 
butterfly {Machaoii) was our constant companion ; while 
now^ and again- a brilliant oriole flashed, from tree to 
tree, or an occasional humming-bird crowned the open- 
ing calyx of some wayside flower with a diadem of 
quivering jewels. 

At length, in a retired valle}-, we found a charming 
little wooden house, built in Queen Anne style, aesthetic 
in colour and closely embowered with newly leaved 
maples. At the door, was a farmer's cart, ^^•hence a 
girl, standing within an open grill, her trim half-length 
framed with the sunny greenery, was receiving milk, 
weighing it in a specially contrived pair of scales, and 
discharging it into a neighbouring tank. When the 
last is charged with the day's supply, its contents are 
allowed to flow into a number of deep circular " sctting- 
cans," which stand immersed in a flowing stream of 



HARTFORD — SILK — ''A CREAMERY:' 213 

cold spring water. Next morning, or twenty-four hours 
later, the cans are skimmed by means of a long-handled 
conical ladle which, at a single dip, takes off all the 
cream. This then flows into a steam-jacketed vat, 
where its temperature is raised to 58"^ in summer, and 
60" to 64° in winter, rendering it fit for churning. Old- 
fashioned " dasher " churns are employed, and are driven 
by a steam-engine which furnishes all the motive power 
required on the establishment, whether for dairying 
purposes or the cleansing of vessels. The butter, when 
formed, is " worked " on a machine consisting of a 
revolving table, which turns under a fluted wooden 
roller and thus mixes and consolidates the butter, while 
the buttermilk flows away by a peripheral channel. 
The butter is brought again and again to the roller 
by the attendant, using a pair of wooden " hands ; " 
but, from first to last, it is untouched by the fingers. 
After working, it is placed in a mass within an ice- 
chamber, whence it is taken, as required, and made up 
into pats for the market. The pats are packed in boxes, 
shaped like a cake-tin, each of which holds fourteen 
pounds, and four of these boxes are then dropped, one 
above the other, into a deep tin cylinder. A fifth 
box, full of ice, tops them up, and when the cylinder 
has been closed with a locked cover, it is ready for 
despatch by rail. 

Maple Farm receives milk from thirty farmers, Vv^ho 
are paid for it at the rate of 6s. 6d. per hundred pounds. 



214 HARTFORD — SILK — ''A CREAMERY:' 

and who subsequently buy back all the buttermilk 
at a halfpenny per gallon, both of these being summer 
prices. No milk is received except of a certain spe- 
cific gravity, or at a higher temperature than eighty 
degrees. The skim-milk is sold to pedlars, who retail 
it in the neighbouring city of Hartford, and a small 
quantity of pure cream, put up in bottles and sent out 
ice-cold, is disposed of at high prices by the same means. 
This creamery only handles five thousand pounds of 
milk, and makes less than two hundred pounds of butter 
daily, and is therefore a very small concern, in com- 
parison with the immense establishments of New York 
and other dairy States. Some of these handle twenty 
thousand pounds of milk, and make six or seven hundred 
pounds of butter daily, while they are like palaces in the 
beauty and refinement of their construction. Many of 
the American creameries were originally started, and 
almost all of them are now owned, by associations of 
farmers, who make large profits from these undertakings. 
It is even said that two well-known New York creamer}^ 
owners, who at one time ran some twenty of these butter 
factories, were once offered, and refused, ^iO,000 for 
their profits of a single year. 

In one important and interesting particular Maple 
Farm is behind the practice of the most advanced 
creameries. The separation of cream from milk, usually 
effected slowly by gravitation, is now instantaneously pro- 
duced by means of centrifugal separators, one of whose 



HARTFORD — SILK — ''A CREAMERY T 215 

best examples, the Laval machine, was shown, for the 
first time in England, at the Royal Agricultural Society's 
meeting of 1879. Milk from the tank is allowed to run 
through a tap into a spheroidal vessel, about a foot in its 
larger diameter, which rotates at a speed of six or seven 
thousand revolutions a minute. The heavier milk is, at 
once, thrown out to the circumference, while the lighter 
cream remains nearer the centre of the rotating vessel, 
and each is drawn ofif from its respective zone by suitable 
discharge pipes. Cream is thus separated at the rate of 
sixty gallons an hour, and the action is continuous as 
long as milk flows into the machine. No time is lost in 
setting, and ten per cent, more cream is obtained from 
milk by this process than under the old system. 

The question of creameries is of much greater im- 
portance than any person who has not looked closely 
into it would suppose. Twenty years ago, scarcely 
any foreign butter was imported into this country, but 
now not one-hundredth part of the butter eaten in 
London is of English origin. Great Britain, indeed, 
buys twelve million pounds worth of butter every year 
from foreigners, a sum equalling in value all her tea 
trade, or half her sugar trade, and being nearly one-fifth 
of her largest import, corn. Yet the climate, the soil, 
the price of cows, wages, and the cost of transport are 
all in favour of the native dairyman, who, within twenty 
years, has allowed this great trade to slip through his 
fi nepers. The British farmer makes his two or ten dozen 



2i6 HARTFORD — SILK — ''A CREAMERY:' 

of butter weekly, and sends it, say, to the London market, 
where the retail butterman must go, very early every 
morning, to make a selection from many hundreds of 
"flats," each differing in quality from the other, and not 
very temptingly displayed in wrappings of cloth, or even 
old newspapers. Butter from Normandy and Holland, 
on the other hand, comes forward in a very different 
way. It is the produce of factories where, after being 
treated in the way already described, it is put up, 
nattily papered, in boxes holding a dozen two-pound 
rolls. The contents of every box, distinguished by a 
given brand, are alike in colour, taste and quality, so 
that the retailer can order from day to day with the 
certainty of getting just what he wants and without 
any expenditure of time and trouble. A trade of twelve 
millions per annum has already been lost to this country 
because English farmers do not associate for the purpose 
of butter-making as their American brethren have done. 
More and more of this business is being annually filched 
from English homesteads by the enterprising owners of 
French and Dutch butter factories, and it is high time 
that some of our bucolic Rip van Winkles should awake 
to a sense of what they have lost, and make an effort to 
recover it in the creamery. 



CHAPTER XIII. 

THE WILLIMANTIC THREAD COMPANY — "BENEVOLENT" 
MILL-OWNING. 

" The leaders of industry, if industry is ever to be led, are virtually the 
captains of the world. If there be no nobleness in them, there will never 
i)i.' an aristocracy." — Carlylc. 

The reader is already aware that I am one of those who 
venture to hope for a future peace between capital and 
labour and a more equitable distribution of the fruits 
of the common toil, to be brought about by some, as 
yet perhaps, undetermined form of co-operative pro- 
duction. But, regarding human institutions, equally 
with the modifications of organic life, as products of 
evolution, I am not disposed to " hurry up " the slow 
growth of social changes, any more than to set my heart 
upon breeding tumblers from blue-rocks within some 
specified number of generations. The inflexible law — 
" multiply, vary, let the fittest live and the unfittest die " 
—has the same application to the origin of ideas as to 
the origin of species, and the lists are not yet, and may 
not for many years be, set for an internecine struggle 



2 1 8 " BENE VOLE NT " MILL- OWXLXG. 

between the wage-earning system and co-operative 
partnership. Hence, I welcome, with all m\- heart, any 
modification of the factory that differentiates it from 
the mere " money-mill," and none the less warmly, 
perhaps, because I cherish a secret hope that through 
some promising "variety" of this kind the line of 
descent from competition to co-operation may even 
now be about to pass. 

Certainly, if there is one establishment which, more 
than any other in America, encourages hope for the 
future of labour, it is the Willimantic Thread Com- 
pany of Connecticut. I have entitled this a " benevolent " 
mill, not that the word properly characterizes the 
principles on which it is conducted, but because those 
principles have exactly the same fruits as Christian 
kindness, which really regulates the factory, although 
professedly, only because " it pays." Do not let me be 
misunderstood. These mills are no industrio-religious 
or philanthropic institution, but an important com- 
mercial undertaking, and if I say they are administered 
on Christian principles, that is because I want to give all 
the prominence I can to the fact that " doing as you 
would be done by" is the mainspring of government at 
Willimantic, and a provably important factor in the 
prosperity of the mills. 

In a case of this sort, it goes without saying that 
there is a strong man with high ideals at the helm of the 
ship, so let me at once introduce the reader to Colonel 



'' BEXEVOLEXT'' MILL-OWXIXG. 219 

Barrows, president and manager of the company. This 
gentleman was captain, and afterwards brevet-major, on 
the staff of General Webb during the civil war, upon 
whose termination he determined to learn the trade of 
a machinist, and, with this view, apprenticed himself to 
the Lowell machine shop, where he worked seven years. 
There, in the first instance, he wheeled pig-iron and 
cleaned castings at wages of two shillings a day, but 
when his apprenticeship ended, he was first put in 
charge of some paper-mills, and afterwards entered the 
service of the Willimantic Thread Company as assistant 
treasurer in 1874, to become the general manager in 
1876. 

From the time of his accession to this office, the 
work began that makes the company to-day a brilliant 
illustration of how much mill-owners can do to advance 
the happiness and raise the moral and intellectual 
condition of their operatives. This, in Colonel Barrows' 
opinion, is a matter of direct self-interest for employers, 
if the}- only could see it. " Why is it," he asks, " that 
the Willimantic thread will lift more ounces of dead 
weight and is smoother than any other } Every manu- 
facturer can buy the same cotton and the same sort 
of machinery to work it. Why, then, the superiorit}- 
of our products? Simply because they are made by 
people who know more than any other people in the 
world engaged in the same work. They put more 
brains into their work than others do. They are in- 



220 ''BENEVOLENT'' MILL-OWNING. 

telligent enough to know the value of care, intelligent 
enough to be conscientious about employing it and 
intelligent enough to know how best to apply it with 
skill to produce the best results. That is why it pays us, 
directly, to increase their knowledge." 

So far Colonel Barrows' words. Let us now go and 
look at his works. The mill will invite us first, then the 
library, reading-rooms, schools, and art schools, next 
the splendid co-operative stores, where his people — I had 
almost said his family — supply all their wants. After- 
wards we will visit the industrial village of Oakgrove, 
enter some of its pretty houses, and last, not least, spend 
a few moments at the president's own simple but charm- 
ing home, which, accessible to all Oakgrove, crowns a 
little eminence in the very centre of the operative 
settlement. 

The Willimantic is a small stream which, rising 
on the eastern flank of the Lyme range, already de- 
scribed, joins the Thames about twenty miles north 
of the Sound, to debouch with the latter river at New 
London. The mills owe it some thanks for power, but 
more for beauty, as it plunges past them in a series of 
cascades, whose clear, brown waters throw themselves, 
three times in the space of half a mile, over masses of 
gneiss rocks, which art has fashioned into dams and nature 
has adorned with the foliage of maple and birch. Behind 
the green arbours which overarch the flashing water 
rise the shoulders of great wooded hills, upon the flats 



''BENEVOLENT'' MILL-OWNING. 221 

at whose feet stand the mills, extensive and handsome 
buildings of white granite, rising from wide, closely mown 
lawns, tastefully planted with maples. 

We approached the newest and largest of these fine 
workshops by a wide gravelled path, winding through 
a garden, whose beds were waiting for their summer 
dress, and entered the mill by a handsome glazed porch, 
one of several similar ante-rooms. These, in addition 
to being provided with numbered closet spaces for wrap.s 
and hats, are hung with pictures, and further decorated 
with sub-tropical plants growing in suitable beds, so that 
we seemed to be on the threshold of some great con- 
servatory, rather than approaching a mill by the work- 
people's entrance. Nor can the visitor, at first, think 
otherwise on passing from the porch into the factory. 
The floor of its vast single room, nearly a thousand feet 
long and two hundred feet wide, contains, indeed, fifty 
thousand spindles ; but instead of looking upwards to 
a low dark ceiling and a chaos of whirling pulleys 
and belts, the eye seeks the azure of a New Eno-land 
sky, through a roof, partly of clear, partly of coloured 
glass, prettily disposed in geometrical designs. The 
motive power is in the basement of the building, and all 
the shafting is housed in brick, tunnel-like chambers, 
beneath the floor, which consequently offers a firm, 
instead of a disagreeably jarring footing, to the opera- 
tives. The walls are mere piers, separating great 
windows, also of clear and coloured glass, below each of 



222 ''BENEVOLENT'' MILL-OWNING. 

which the brickwork is fashioned into pockets, filled with 
soil and forming great flower-beds planted with climbers, 
such as taxonia, coboea and English ivy, together with 
geraniums, petunias and flowering shrubs, which frame 
the spindles, so to speak, in roses. The huge room is 
spotlessly clean, and beside the spinning-frames stand 
girls who, although mill-hands, may truly be said to be 
of from fifteen to twenty-five summers. All of them 
are neatly dressed, and wear a uniform white linen apron 
of tasteful cut, while their faces are clean, bright and 
healthful, and their hair carefully, often skilfully, dressed. 
One of the first things to catch my eye in the 
Willimantic mills was the following notice, posted in all 
the entrance-halls. " No person who cannot read and 
write will be employed in this mill after the 4th of July, 
1884." The paper was dusty and stained with age, 
having already hung for some three years in its place, 
so that no employes were without ample warning of the 
manager's intentions, or the opportunity of learning in 
time, if they did not already know, how to read and 
write. It will be understood that almost all the help 
at Willimantic is Irish, with some admixture of 
Canadians ; if it were still, as in the early days, 
American, no such paper would, of course, have been 
seen, but Colonel Barrows knows that if he is to " make 
Americans " of his alien operatives, he must begin by 
educating them. There is not, however, a man, woman, 
or child in the mill who will be qualified for discharge 



" BEXE VOLE XT " MILL- OIVXIXG. 223 

under this notice when it comes into operation next 
Independence Day. 

The dining-room is a large, handsome apartment, 
decorated, hke the porches, with pictures and plants, 
where all who please may get a capital midday meal, 
well cooked and daintily served, for a trifling sum. 
Here, too, at nine o'clock every morning, the younger 
hands assemble in detachments, to take a cup of milk 
and a slice of bread and butter. This light refreshment 
is furnished at the expense of the company, and may 
form the first and simplest example I have to offer of 
a benevolence that " pays." American mills begin work 
at seven o'clock, and the first stop for a meal is made at 
noon. Five hours is too long for young people to wait 
for food without a sacrifice of vital energy, and hence 
it has been found, by carefully comparing the cost of the 
time and food in question with the increase of produc- 
tion to which it gives rise, that it pays to show this 
attention to the health of the young hands. So marked, 
indeed, was the advantage that followed upon it, that 
Colonel Barrows is now trying a farther experiment in 
the same direction. A certain section of the help has 
been selected to receive a small cup of bouillon at 10.30 
every morning, but without leaving their machines. 
This had been given for three months previously to my 
visit, and with such effect that I found it easy to 
determine in what section of the factory the experiment 
was in progress by the greater appearance of physical 



224 ''BENEVOLENT'' MILL-OWNING. 

vigour in the operatives. " It is not benevolence," said 
Colonel Barrows, " it pays ; otherwise I could not ask 
my directors to adopt' the plan. I proved the value of 
the milk-meal by figures before I allowed the company 
to pay for it, and when I can do the same thing for the 
bouillon, I will ask them to relieve me of the cost. But," 
he added, " those girls go from their work, as they 
come to it, singing, laughing, almost dancing, and I 
know that, in their high physical condition, they cannot 
help turning out more and better work than the 
others." 

"But," I asked, "your aesthetic treatment of the 
factory buildings, your stained-glass roof and windows, 
your little art galleries in the porches and dining-room, 
and, above all, your flowers, and the gardeners who care 
for them, — do these things pay ? " " Remember," was 
the answer, " I was my own architect in this mill, and, 
aside from expensive decoration, of which, observe, 
there is none, it costs no more to give an open roof an 
eyeable construction, or to paint it tastefully than to 
disregard appearances altogether. As for the stained- 
glass, I admit that it has cost twenty pounds more 
than plain glass would have done, but, in so large a 
building, that is not a ruinous extravagance. The pic- 
tures are all presents or the work of our own art school, 
and, as for the flowers, I must tell you something 
about cotton-spinning before you can understand that 
it pays to ' frame mj- spindles in roses.' 



" BENE VOLE NT " MILL- O J VNLYG. 1 2 5 

" Cotton-spinning cannot be carried on except in a 
moist atmosphere, and America, with her chy climate, 
has more difficulty in securing proper hygrometrical 
conditions in the spinning-rooms than Manchester. 
Usually, the air is kept moist by spray-producing 
machines, called aspirators, and in our other buildings, 
not furnished, as this is, with flowers, it is the work of 
two men to attend to these aspirators and report on the 
hourly condition of the air in the mill. But here, a 
single gardener does all the work of my conservatory, 
while the transpiration of the plants keeps the air much 
more equably moist than do the aspirators. In addition 
to this, I am sure that the very intelligence to which, as 
I have said, our thread owes its superiority is fostered, 
almost as much by cleanliness, order and beauty, as 
by education itself" 

" Your idea is evidently to make the factory some- 
thing more than a mere workshop ? " I inquired. 

" I wish it to be a place only less attractive than home 
itself," was the answer. " Factory work is monotonous, 
I grant, but not more so, making fair allowance for 
the stimulus of promotion which always awaits good 
service, than the ordinary domestic duties. Work must 
always be largely a matter of routine for all but very 
high intellects ; but routine itself need not be dull when 
its tasks are performed actively and easily because 
health is high, cheerfully because of reward and appre- 
ciation, pleasantly because of intelligent companionship 

Q 



226 " BENE VOLENT " MILL- O WNING. 

and inspiring surroundings. But it is time for us to go 
and look at the library." 

Half a dozen words, on the way, about the character 
of the labour which this captain of industry commands, 
and which he would lead to such splendid social con- 
quests. This, as I have said, is almost entirely Irish, 
a nationality which passes through three phases of 
character after being exported from the green isle and 
semi-starvation to plenty and free America. When 
Paddy first lands in the States he is docile and well- 
behaved, although ignorant, as a matter of course. 
Presently, realizing the breadth and depth of American 
independence, he kicks up his heels and, for a time, 
becomes a useless and almost intolerable member of 
society. Lastly, finding that, even in America, a fair 
day's work is required for a fair day's wage, he drops 
his airs, settles to some useful calling, if, happily, he 
escapes from keeping a beer-saloon, and having learnt 
the indispensability of an education he does not himself 
possess, sends his family to the common school. The 
children of the first generation improve upon the father 
and mother ; those of the second are better still ; the 
third can scarcely be distinguished from Americans, and, 
at Willimantic, examples of every class I have mentioned 
are working together in the mill. 

It was for such people that Colonel Barrows opened 
his first library, in an old blacksmith's shop, fitted up 
with book-shelves, well suppled with books, newspapers 



" BENE VOLE NT " MILL- O IVNING. 227 

and magazines, and to which every operative was 
freely invited. In the early days of the reading-room, 
its Irish-American visitors behaved as only Irish- 
American youth can do. They sat in the comfortable 
chairs, hat on head and heels in air, chewing and 
spitting, treating the books without respect, and, if 
they read at all, discussing the newspapers loudly and 
foolishly. " I used to go down every night," said 
Barrows, " take off my hat on entering, and read my 
newspaper, as I w^ould have done at a club. I never 
asserted myself or rated anybody, no matter how bad 
his behaviour, but courteously greeted the room on 
entering and leaving, and showed myself ready to chat 
over the news, or, if asked, to read aloud, as I would 
among a company of gentlemen. It told in time ; for 
meanwhile, I was building good houses in Oakgrove, 
establishing the co-operative store, where it soon became 
known that the best goods could be had at the lowest 
prices, organizing evening schools and art classes, so 
that first the better, and then the worse sort began to 
realize that I really wished to benefit them and to meet 
my advances halfway." 

And now ? The old library is abandoned to the 
smith once more. A really beautiful Queen Anne 
building has been added to the mill, and contains a 
library of two thousand volumes, a handsome reading- 
room, where all the papers and most of the scientific 
journals lie upon the tables, an amply equipped art 



228 " BENE VOLE NT " MILL- WNING. 

school, taught by a Newhaven professor, a singnig" 
school in charge of a clever musician, a clerk in the 
company's serv^ice, and an evening school taught by an 
excellent " school-marm," the American equivalent of 
our " certificated mistress." 

And who and what arc the readers, the students, and 
pupils of to-day ? All the male hands in the mill, who 
look and behave like American mechanics — that is 
to say like gentlemen — and a great company of bright, 
intelligent girls, pictures of health in appearance, as 
neatly dressed and as well, if not quite as finely 
mannered as the students of Mount Holyoke itself. 
These meet after the day's active, but not exhausting 
work is over, like some industrial family, far more eager 
than the daughters of an easy and luxurious life for 
a few hours of intellectual refreshment, and they scatter, 
when night empties conversation, class and lecture 
rooms, to homes as worthy of working men and women 
as are the mills themselves. 

Leaving this beautiful building, no crude, white- 
washed home of elementary culture, but tasteful, refined, 
and well-ordered as a club in its design, decoration and 
keeping, this legend, conspicuous on the library walls, 
was the last, as it had been the first thing upon which, 
entering, my eyes rested ; — " Remember that the learning 
of the few is despotism, the learning of the multitude is 
liberty, and that intelligent and principled liberty is 
fame, wisdom and power. The well-educated operative 



''BENEVOLENT'' MILL-OWNING. 229 

does more work, does it better, earns more money, 
commands more confidence, rises faster and to higher 
posts in his employment than the uneducated workman 
can," {Horace Jllann.) 

The co-operative store, if it did not begin in a smithy, 
was first opened in a coal-shed. Finding that his opera- 
tives were paying two dollars a ton more for their fuel 
than the company. Colonel Barrows gave notice that 
they might buy from the company's stores at cost. 
Then he ascertained that they were giving too much 
at the shops for flour, so he treated this as he had done 
the coal supply, and, finally, opened three other depart- 
ments, one for groceries, a second for meat and a third 
for dry goods, shoes and millinery. Thus, in the course 
of a short time after his coming to Willimantic, his 
people were able to buy everything they wanted about 
ten per cent, below retail prices, while Barrows, true 
to his love of the coiinne il faiLt, has made his shop a 
perfect miracle of cleanliness and order, vicing in these 
respects with the mill itself 

The colonel has a fixed idea that by placing people 
among pleasant and beautiful surroundings they become 
more careful, cleanly, tasteful and intelligent, and, there- 
fore, as he is never tired of insisting, more valuable to 
their employers. So, by-and-by, he began building- 
cottages for his hands on a picturesque and wooded 
site on the south side of the river known as the Oaks. 
Oakgrove is like Zenas Crane's industrial village at 



230 '' BENEVOLENT'' MILL-OWNING. 

Dalton, but with one important difference. It was de- 
signed by a man who, if an American by birth, is an 
artist by nature. Hence, gridiron streets and duplicate 
houses have given way at Willim antic to curving roads 
and dwelHngs made to seem all unlike by the simple and 
inexpensive device of repeating three types of construc- 
tion instead of only one, and planting these with studied 
irregularity on their sites. Three grades of accommoda- 
tion are thus provided, the rents in all cases being 
fixed at such a sum as will pay five per cent, on outlay. 
Every cottage is surrounded by a garden and the gar- 
dener who attends to the mill supplies the people with 
cuttings, and teaches them how to cultivate flowers. The 
president offers a prize for the door-yard that is hand- 
somest in appearance on the first day of every September, 
and great is the competition, greater the general taste 
for floriculture, thus begotten. 

We visited two of these homes of industry. The 
first was tenanted by a French-Canadian family, only 
one of whose members could speak good English. She, 
a comely girl of eighteen, told us that her parents and 
the three elder girls, of whom she was one, worked in 
the mill, earning together five pounds a week ; that their 
rent was five shillings a week ; that the younger children 
were at school, and the three working girls pupils of the 
evening and art classes. A glance at the spotless 
kitchen, at the mother's neat appearance, at the father's 
trim garden, told the rest of their simple story. Here 



" BENE VOLE XT " MILL- 1 VNLYG. 23 1 

was a family who, if they had fallen on careless em- 
ployers, might have helped still further to crowd the 
flats of some Holyoke, but who had instead been lifted 
into higher conditions of life than they had ever pre- 
\iously known, by a " benevolence " which pays its own 
way. The second house was the residence of the 
electrical expert, who looks after the Edison lights in the 
mill. He, of course, was a Yankee, and a highly paid 
man. We spent half an hour chatting pleasantly with 
him, and it did not surprise me, after some experience 
of American skilled labour, to find his house, if some- 
what simpler, as attractive as that, say, of an English 
clerg\'man, while its books and papers gave ample 
evidence of the owner's familiarity with the world of 
commerce and science. 

On our way to the chief's house we met a staid but 
sweet-voiced lady, dressed in grey, with a bunch of 
flowers in one hand and a little memorandum book in 
the other. The colonel stopped to speak with her, and 
I, by-and-by, became aware that this was his " mission- 
woman," who visits sick homes, ascertains all wants, 
lightens many a weary hour of suffering by her presence, 
and brightens many an invalid room with flowers from 
the mill, while taking shrewd note of the condition of 
every house she enters, reporting her daily work to the 
president, and taking counsel with him in any cases of 
difficulty. " I would back the girls in my mill against 
an\- ladies' college in America," said he, as she left us, 



232 " BENE VOLE XT " MILL- O WNING. 

" whether for intelligence or virtue ; but a wise and good 
woman always among the people does as much to keep 
us free of the beginnings of evil as the school or the 
pulpit." 

A moment later we reached the door of one of the 
most tasteful but oddest houses I have ever seen. 
" This is my bungalow," said Barrows, " I hope you will 
like it. One of the chief objects I had in view when 
designing it was to show my people that beauty can be 
had without much money, and that a pretty home is 
within the reach of every operative." The walls are all 
made of old materials, or rather of overburnt and dis- 
torted bricks, the refuse of a neighbouring kiln. The 
courses are irregular in consequence, but tastefully so, 
and pretty climbers make the straggling Elizabethan 
cottage still more picturesque. The woodwork of the 
doors, windows and staircases have no mouldings, but 
constructive skill takes the place of other decoration, 
while the unpolished surfaces of native walnut and 
chestnut, two of the cheapest American woods, 
replace all paint. We entered a central hall, lighted 
from the roof, whose simple structural features were 
neither decorated nor concealed, and I looked in 
admiration round a noble yet home-like apartment, 
whose hangings, pictures, books and furniture bespoke 
refined taste and, as it seemed to me, a long purse 
as well. " You have made a palace of your cottage, 
colonel," I said ; " surely these embroideries and 



''BENEVOLENT'' MILL-OWNING. 233 

pictures are no examples for wage-earners to copy." 
" Every one of them is the work of my wife," was the 
answer, " as they might be those of our art-scholars. 
Come and look at her studio." I was not fortunate 
enough to see the mistress of this charming retreat, who 
was absent for the moment from her delightful home, 
but it was easy to see that Colonel Barrows possesses 
an able coadjutor as well as a "woman who exalts" 
in his wife. Her rooms are open to every mill-girl in 
Oakgrovc, their adornments are things for her to 
study, their refinements goals for the granddaughters 
of Irish peasants to reach. Meanwhile, if there is 
no " Lady Bountiful " to patronize, there is counsel 
for trouble, sympathy for affliction, and encourage- 
ment for energy awaiting every operative who enters 
the chief's doors. 

That this is no traveller's tale, no exaggerated 
account of what I saw at Willimantic, let the president's 
parting remarks testify. It was time I should go, 
having already absorbed many hours of my kind enter- 
tainer's day, so much interested w^as I in all he had to 
show or say. Shaking hands at his door, whence we 
surveyed the cottages of Oakgrove, crowding around the 
very feet of the larger house, I said, " You prefer, then, 
to live surrounded by your employes, and do not mind 
the white flutter of washing-days, or the shouts of 
children at play below, because you think you can better 
their lot by your presence ? " " It is not, with me, a 



234 ''BENEVOLENT'' MILL-OWNING. 

question of preference at all," was the repl}-. " This mill 
and these people are my life, my career, the next greatest 
responsibility I have in the world after that of my own 
family. I dare as soon desert my flag in action, as leave 
my hands without their natural and appointed head. 
Good-bye." 



CHAPTER XIV. 

LOWELL, PAST AND TRESENT. 

" Let the captains of industry retire into their own hearts, and ask 
solemnly if there is nothing but vulturous hunger for fine wines, valet 
reputations, and gilt carriages discoverable there ? And thou who feelest 
aught of a God-like stirring in thee, follow it, I conjure thee. Arise, save 

thyself, be one of those that save thy country." — Carlyle. 

We already know that a high condition of labour in 
New England is a survival of a state of things once 
much more general than at present, and we have seen 
it, now threatened, as at Holyoke, with complete sub- 
mergence under the waves of foreign immigration, now 
lifted, as at Willimantic, to an even greater height than 
in the early days, according as laissez-faire is, or is not, 
king. In the early days, indeed, laissez-faire had no 
share in the administration of the New England factory, 
which, at a time when labour was most degraded in 
Europe, was conducted with the utmost care for the 
mental, moral and physical condition of the operative. 

In the beginning of this century, the public opinion 
of New England was very unfriendly to the establish- 



236 LOWELL, PAST AND PRESENT. 

ment of manufactories, so great were the complaints then 
made in Europe of these, as the seats of vice and disease. 
Thus, when Humphreysville, the first industrial village 
on the Naugatuck River, was built by the Hon. David 
Humphreys, in 1804, discreet parents were reluctant to 
place their sons and daughters in its paper, woollen and 
cotton factories, from unfavourable apprehensions con- 
cerning the tendency of such establishments. This, 
notwithstanding the fact that General Humphreys' desire 
to foster American manufactures was solely the result 
of patriotic motives, and that he began the work with 
the avowed determination, either to prevent the evils of 
the European factory system from arising, or, if this 
could not be done, to give up his design. Hence, he 
built comfortable and healthy houses for the accommo- 
dation of all his hands, who were abundantly supplied 
with vegetables from great gardens in the rear of the 
manufactories. All his apprentices were regularly in- 
structed in reading, writing and arithmetic, and any 
operative discovered to be in any way immoral was 
immediately discharged. 

The same public opinion which stimulated Hum- 
phreys' efforts for the moral and physical health of his 
people influenced the State legislature of that day. 
Humphreysville was still in its infancy when a law was 
passed constituting the select men and magistracy of 
any town in which manufactories had been, or should be 
established visitors of these institutions. The same 



LOWELL, PAST AND P RES EXT. 237 

statute required employers to control, in a specified 
manner, the morals of their workmen, and to educate 
their children as other children of plain families were 
educated throughout the State. The visitors were charged 
to inquire in what manner these duties were performed 
by the mill-owner, and to report any laxity on his part 
to the State legislature. Thus, contrary to what had 
occurred in Europe, the beginnings of manufacturing 
enterprise in America were marked by special efforts to 
secure the health, education and morality of the opera- 
tives, while the idea of the mill-owner's direct responsi- 
bility for the intelligence and good behaviour of his 
employes was firmly established in the public mind. 

It was during the time when this responsibility was 
fully recognized that the most important industrial 
town in New England came to the birth. Harriett Mar- 
tineau and Charles Dickens are only two among many 
distinguished writers who have sketched the factory life 
of Lowell, such as it was forty years ago, and given the 
world pictures which, if they once caused some silly 
people to laugh at the "refinements of factory girls," were 
none the less occasions of astonishment and delight to 
all sensible men at the time they were published. But 
everything is changed since then, and Lowell no longer 
knows the girl who tended a spinning-frame during the 
day and wrote for the LoivcU Offering at night. Suc- 
cessive waves of L'ish and Canadian immigrants have 
swept her out of the factories which now, better than 



238 LOWELL, PAST AND PRESENT. 

any other establishments in New England, exemplify 
the extent and character of recent alterations in 
American labour conditions. Let me try, with the 
assistance of a lady, herself formerly a mill-hand, 
and who has recently given the world an account of 
" Early Factory Labour in New England," * to sketch 
what the life of a Lowell cotton-spinner once was, while 
a stroll through the city will afterwards tell us what 
it now is. 

In 1832, Lowell was little more than a village. P'ive 
" corporations " had started cotton-spinning there, but 
their mills were not yet all built. Help was in great 
demand, and stories were told all over the country of the 
new factory town and the high wages that were offered 
to all classes of workpeople, stories that reached the 
ears of farmers' and mechanics' sons, and gave new 
life to dependent women in distant towns and farm- 
houses. Lito this Yankee Eldorado needy people soon 
began to pour by the stage-coach and canal-boat. Some 
of them were daughters of professional men, whose 
mothers, left widows, were struggling to maintain the 
younger children. Others had fathers and mothers in 
reduced circumstances, to whom they sent home part of 
their wages, while ostensibly away from home " on a 
visit." A few were people of mysterious antecedents, but 
the bulk were the daughters of New England farmers, 
storekeepers and mechanics. These country girls arrived 

* Report of the Massachusetts Dureau of Labour Statistics, 1S83. 



LOWELL, PAST AND PRESENT, 239 

dressed in outlandish fashions, their arms brimful of 
bandboxes, containing all their worldly goods. Their 
names were as old-fashioned as their appearance, not- 
withstanding which, Triphena, Kezia, and Samantha, 
Lovey, Leafy, and Plumy soon learned the ways of the 
town, and their early earnings made them as modish as 
the oldest mill-hands in Lowell. 

At this time, it must be remembered, there was no 
lower caste than that of factory-girl known among the 
women who earned their own living in Europe. There, 
she was little better than a slave, while her surround- 
ings were most unfavourable to purity and self-respect. 
All this was well known in America, and, at first, 
created a prejudice against factory labour, which, how- 
ever, gradually gave way as the Lowell mills began to 
fill with healthy and energetic New England women, 
who brought the manners and independence of the 
country to the town and soon began to make the latter 
an even better, because more stimulating school of 
intelligence than the former had ever been. 

Help, on the other hand, was much too valuable 
to be oppressed, while public opinion demanded from 
mill-owners, agents and overseers that responsible care 
for its operatives which has already been described and 
discussed. Hence, in the factory, the rights of the mill- 
girls were strictly respected. They were subjected to no 
extortion. Their own accounts of labour done b}^ 
piece-work were accepted. Though their hours were 



240 LOWELL, PAST AND PRESENT. 

long, they were not overworked, and had plenty of time 
to sit and rest. Personally, they were treated with 
consideration by their employers, between whom and 
themselves a feeling of respectful equality existed. 
The best girls were invited, sometimes to the houses 
of the mill-owners or superintendents, at others by the 
clergy or deacons of the churches, and not a few of them 
married into the best families in Lowell. 

At first, the mill-girls had but small chance to 
acquire any book-learning. But, after a time, evening 
schools were established, while, in 1836, several of the 
larger corporations compelled every child in their mills 
under fourteen years of age to attend school for three 
months in the year. Some evening classes, catering for 
older pupils, were devoted entirely to one particular 
study. Thus there were geography schools, rhetoric 
schools, and schools for the teaching of composition 
and prose-writing, where a taste for literature was 
sedulously cultivated. 

Meanwhile, the girls lived in great boarding-houses 
belonging to the various corporations and kept by 
widows, women of known high character, who were 
often also the friends and advisers of their boarders. 
Each house was a community, where fifty or sixty 
young women from different parts of New England 
lived together like a great family. When not at work 
or at school, they sat in their chambers, talking and 
sewing, for all were their own dressmakers, or in some 



LOWELL, PAST AND PRESENT. 241 

corner of the large dining-hall, reading-, studying, or 
writing. Dickens speaks with astonishment of the 
home-hfe in one of these boarding-houses, where " there 
is ahvays a piano, and nearly all the young ladies sub- 
scribe to circulating libraries ; " but he was by no means 
the only distinguished writer who went to see for 
himself how the Lowell mill-girls lived, and told the 
world a similar story. 

If I have said nothing as yet about the morality of 
the mill in those early days, that is because this could 
not be otherwise than pure in such an atmosphere as 
had been created at Lowell. The mill-girls were re- 
ligious by training and Puritan inheritance, and upon 
entering a factory each one was obliged to sign a 
" regulation paper," which, among other things, required 
her to attend regularly at some place of public worship. 
There were, at one time, fourteen organized religious 
societies in Lowell, ten of which constituted a Sabbath- 
School Union, comprising more than five thousand 
scholars, of whom three-fourths were mill-girls. On 
Sunday mornings the streets were alive with young 
women going or returning from sabbath-school or 
meeting, and the spectacle of so many bright girls, in 
the bloom of life, and holiday dress, has roused the 
enthusiasm of more than one European visitor to the 
" wonderful city of spindles and looms." The same 
regulation paper which commanded church attendance 
required every girl to be of good moral character, and 

R 



242 LOWELL, PAST AND PRESENT. 

if any one proved otherwise, she was at once turned 
out of the mill. The standard of behaviour was, how- 
ever, so high that rules of conduct w^ere practically dead 
letters, so markedly did the majority separate themselves 
from girls who were suspected of wrong-doing. 

Society and communication, those best gifts of a 
great city, were just what these New England girls 
needed for the development of their native powers. 
They were omnivorous readers, some of them even 
students of the classical languages and mathematical 
science, and they discussed the books they read, 
debated social and religious questions, compared ideas 
and experiences, and generally advised and helped one 
another. Such, indeed, was the reputation of Lowell, 
at one time, that many girls came there as to an 
Alma Mater, leaving comfortable homes for the mill, 
not because it was needful for them to earn money, 
but in order to make use of social and literary ad- 
vantages which could not be found in remote and 
secluded farmhouses. 

At length, the intellectual activity which had been 
fostered by evening schools and lyceum lectures, by 
reading and discussion, issued in the publication of the 
Lozvell Offering, with whose selected writings Miss 
Martineau made us first acquainted in her " Mind 
among the Spindles." The Offeruig, a very modest 
magazine, came to the birth in 1840, and died in 
1849, a date which reminds us that the first wave of 



LOWELL, PAST AND PRESENT. 243 

the great Irish emigration, following upon the potato 
famine, had already begun to rise in those New England 
mills, whence it was presently to sweep the higher type 
of labour almost entirely away. There is no need to 
speak of the literary merits of the Lowell Offering. Its 
articles were often crude, as a matter of course, but its 
pages were the nursery wherein Lucy Larcom and Mar- 
garet Foley, to say nothing of many less distinguished 
women, grew from literary childhood to rare maturity 
of merit. But there were some remarkable mill-girls 
at Lowell in those early days who were not writers for 
the Offering. One became an artist of note, another 
a poet of more than local fame, a third was an 
inventor, a fourth one of the best advocates of women's 
rights, a fifth the founder of a free library in her native 
town. Some became teachers, and others missionaries, 
a great many married either professional men or store- 
keepers, and a few became the wives of clergymen and 
members of Congress. 

Such was Lowell only forty years ago, and such 
might every factory town in America again become 
if its citizens were as sensible of their responsibilities, 
its mill-owners as conscientious, and its help as well 
principled and intelligent as in the days I have just 
described. That foreign operatives can be raised to the 
old Lowell levels has been abundantly proved at Willi- 
mantic, nor would it be difficult to name many other 
American factories, both in and out of New England, 



244 LOWELL, PAST AND PRESENT. 

where the condition of labour is almost as high as in 
these remarkable thread-mills. Nowhere, however, is 
this the case, unless employers are conscious of a 
heavy responsibility for the morality and intelligence 
of their people — a responsibility which they were com- 
pelled to keep in view when the mill-hands were all 
descendants of New England and Puritan ancestors, but 
which is apt to be lost sight of now that they are the 
children of poor and ignorant Irish and Canadian 
parents. 

And what is the industrial condition of Lowell to- 
day ? " Last winter," says the lady to whom I have 
already referred, " I was invited to speak to a company 
of the Lowell mill-girls, and tell them something 
about my early life as a member of their guild. I 
was the more willing to do this as I was anxious to 
ascertain the status of the successors to the early mill- 
girls. About two hundred of them assembled in the 
pleasant parlour of the People's Club, and listened atten- 
tively to my story. When it was over, a few of them 
gathered around and asked me many questions. Li 
turn, I questioned them about their work, their hours of 
labour, their wages, and their means of improvement. 
When I urged them to occupy their spare time in read- 
ing and study, they seemed to understand the necessity 
of it, but answered sadly, ' We will try, but we work so 
hard and are so tired.' It was plainly to be seen that 
these operatives did not go to their labour with the 



LOWELL, PAST AND PRESENT. 245 

jubilant feeling that the old mill-girls used to have, that 
their work was done without aim and purpose, that they 
took no interest in it beyond the thought that it was the 
means of earning their daily bread. There was a tired 
hopelessness about them, such as was never seen among 
the early mill-girls." 

The operatives of to-day have more leisure and earn 
more money than those of forty years ago, but they 
do not know how to improve the one or use the other. 
This is not because the germs of intellectual life were 
sown among the children of Puritan fathers and withheld 
from the compatriots of Grattan and Moore, Mirabeau 
and Racine, but rather because those were early taught, 
while these have never heard of the dignity of labour. 
Hence, falling into an " inferior class," a thing, happily, 
unknown in old Lowell, the mill-girls of to-day feel 
none of the aspirations with which their predecessors 
put their feet on the first rungs of the ladder of learning, 
aspirations without which the road to knowledge is 
thorny indeed. 

" These American-born children of foreign parentage 
are under the control neither of their Church nor their 
parents, and they consequently adopt the vices and follies 
instead of the good habits of our people. It is vital to 
the interests of the community that they should be 
brought under good moral influence, that they should 
have the help and sympathy of their employers, live in 
better homes and breathe a better social atmosphere 



246 LOWELL, PAST AND PRESENT. 

than is now to be found in our factory towns. They 
need, in fact, to be lifted out of a condition of mental 
squalor into a higher state of thought and feeling. 

" Meanwhile, manufacturing corporations, with a few 
honourable exceptions, no longer represent a protecting 
care for, or exercise a parental influence over their opera- 
tives. They have become soulless organizations, whose 
members forget that they are responsible for the minds 
and bodies as well as the wages of those whose labour 
creates their wealth. It is time that they who gather 
riches from the factories of the country should again 
understand that they do not discharge their whole duty 
to their operatives by the monthly payment of wages, 
but they are also responsible for the barren and hopeless 
lives of their operatives, for their unlovely surroundings, 
and for the moral and physical degradation of their 
children. Would it not even be wise, that employers 
should seriously consider whether it is better to degrade 
their people to the level of the same class in foreign 
countries, or to mix a little conscience with their capital, 
and so bring the factory operative of to-day back into 
the lost Eden of the past .'' " So far one who is herself 
a daughter of the Eden that Lowell once was, speaking 
of the Lowell of to-day. Let us take a turn through 
the city streets and ask our own eyes whether they con- 
firm or gainsay her testimony. 

Lowell, a city of fifty thousand inhabitants. Is perhaps 
more beautifully situated than any other industrial city 



LOWELL, PAST AND PRESENT. 247 

in America. It lies upon the Merrimac River, among 
hills which enclose the town with a spacious natural 
amphitheatre, around one-fourth of whose circumference 
the broad, sparkling stream makes a magnificent sweep. 
Back of this, the hills rise steeply for several hundred 
feet, clothed with dense foliage, and crowned with crests 
whence one looks away to the blue peaks of the distant 
Green Mountains, or down to the great cotton-mills 
below. These skirt the right bank of the Merrimac with 
parallel lines of bastion-like buildings, whose regularity 
is frequently interrupted by the foliage of shade trees, 
which so embower roofs, steeples, and belfries that one 
seems to be viewing a city of gardens rather than a great 
industrial town. 

The falls of the Merrimac, from which the motive 
power of the mills is derived, are dammed by a structure 
only a little less gigantic than that which controls the 
Connecticut River at Holyoke, and over its lip a broad 
stream of sparkling, brown water pours in a graceful 
cascade, to ripple over a rocky bed below, towards the 
ocean. Water from above the dam is led to the various 
mills through a canal, the space between which and the 
river has been laid out with romantic walks, threading 
grassy glades, overshadowed by leafy maples. The 
suburbs are beautified by many charming houses, and as 
these, for the most part, lie upon high ground, whence 
the mountain views are many and fine, the dwellings of 
Lowell mill-owners and superintendents are unusually 
attractive. 



248 LOWELL, PAST AND PRESENT. 

But if " Little Canada," the French-Canadian quarter 
of the town, be an example of operative homes, then 
the Eden of forty years ago has indeed departed. 
Its streets are narrow and unpaved lanes ; its rickctty 
wooden houses elbow one another closely, and have no 
gardens, scarcely even back yards. They are let out 
in flats, as at Holyoke, but are far inferior to the tene- 
ment houses of that city, which, if they shelter squalid 
folk, are at least well built and convenient. Within these 
wretched dwellings, whose erection ought never to have 
been sanctioned by the authorities, the Canadians 
crowd, as they do in Holyoke, Peeps into interiors dis- 
close dirty rooms and families pigging together at meals, 
or slatternly women and unkempt men leaning from the 
window-sills. The uncleaned streets are resonant with 
dirty, ragged and bare-legged children, as true gutter- 
birds as any to be found in Europe. The picture speaks 
of nothing but barren, hopeless lives for the adults and 
certain degradation for the children. 

The Irish portion of the town has wider streets and 
houses somewhat less crowded than those of " Little 
Canada," but is of scarcely better, although different, 
aspect. Without being actually squalid, it has many of 
the repulsive features peculiar to quarters inhabited by 
ignorant labour. Slatternly women, of advanced and 
middle age, gossip in groups around the doorways. 
Young girls, tawdrily fine in dress, saunter along the 
side-walks, or loll idly from the windows, their hair 



LOWELL, PAST AND PRESENT. 249 

shining with oil, their necks gaudy with flaring ker- 
chiefs and gilt brooches, saluting passing friends and 
acquaintances. Knots of men, in their shirt-sleeves, are 
grouped about the bars of the frequent saloons, whose 
doors here, as everywhere else throughout New England, 
all exhibit Irish names. No signs of poverty are visible, 
on the contrary, an air of prosperous ignorance, satisfied 
to eat, drink and idle away the hours not given to work, 
distinguish the Erin of Lowell from its more squalid 
Canada ; but one hardly knows which of the two 
quarters will prove the more difficult field for cultivation 
by the social reformer. 

The city, it is fair to say, exhibits other and more 
favourable views of operative life. The old boarding- 
houses remain, and many of them are excellently con- 
ducted. Although no longer centres of a vivid intellectual 
life, they shelter many worthy daughters of industry, who 
only want a helping hand to lift them nearer to the social 
levels of the past. But these girls are not Canadians or 
Irish, they are the remnant of native labour which still 
occupies a corner of every New England factory. In 
the outskirts of the city, too, there are numerous 
pretty white houses, the homes of toil, where typical 
American families, not necessarily of native birth, are 
growing up amidst healthy and morally wholesome 
conditions, and enjoying public advantages as great as 
those of Willimantic itself. For it must never be for- 
gotten that, even where labour in America seems deepest 



250 LOWELL, PAST AND PRESENT. 

in the mire, there, as everywhere else, the common and 
Sunday schools, the free hbrary, and the church are 
always ready to lend a helping hand to those who have 
the courage to help themselves. These agents of im- 
provement are as active in Lowell to-day as they were 
in the past, and it will not be because they have bowed 
the head to king laissez-faire if American labour 
degrades from its present condition in the future. The 
problem at Lowell, as at Holyoke, is not how to stimu- 
late the energy, or extend the influence of the State, the 
Church, and the school, but how to make employers 
their earnest, active and sympathetic allies. 

And if, leaving Lowell, I were to carry the reader 
with me to Fall River, the Manchester of the United 
States, where matters are, perhaps, at their worst, or 
thence into a hundred other mills in addition to those 
we have already visited, the same question would arise 
in every one of them. In another remote valley of 
manufacturing villages we should see labour again, 
as at Ansonia and Waterbury, scarcely preserving its 
old, unquestioned equality with capital, but intelligent, 
self-respecting and respected " for a' that." At a new 
Holyoke we should find it down in the very dust, 
ignorant of its own dignity and careless of its rights, 
accepting the position of a mere wage-earner without 
a protest, and a life of aimless, hopeless dulness, 
because it has never been taught that it is human. 
A second North Adams would exhibit it in arms 



LOWELL, PAST AND PRESENT. 251 

against capital, fighting a furious battle over the 
division of profits, both sides accepting the position of 
antagonists as the natural one between hirer and hired, 
both employed in laying waste the field of their common 
industry. We might even surprise it, as at Willimantic, 
lion and lamb sharing an idyllic home, the distinction 
between master and servant marked, chiefly, by a 
superiority of character and conduct which it is the aim 
of one to diffuse, of the other to emulate. Or another 
community, such as we visited at Mount Lebanon 
might receive us, whose members enjoy, in common, the 
fruits of the common toil, and where, but for the powers 
and passions of man, labour might seem to have reached 
the haven where it would be. Finally, we might be wit- 
nesses to at least one actual deed of partnership between 
lender and labourer, which, dividing with rough justice 
the profits of industry between all the parties to pro- 
duction, has made the prosperous manufacturing village 
of Peacedale, in Rhode Island, more than worthy of the 
name it bears. 

Every case I have cited, or might cite, would, how- 
ever, only emphasize, each in its own way, the question 
which is already before us — How is America going to 
treat a problem, formerly the curse and still the danger 
of Europe, and for which democratic institutions have 
confessedly failed to furnish the solution, once confidently 
but unfairly expected from them? Unlike the political 
fabrics of Europe, the American Republic is founded 



252 LOWELL, PAST AND PRESENT. 

upon the sovereignty of the people, and it will prosper 
or perish, according as the mental and moral status of the 
sovereign people is high or low. The question whether 
labour in America will in future sustain, improve upon, 
or degrade from its once high condition, is one beside 
which every other national problem, social, religious, or 
political is a matter of trifling moment, for upon this 
depends the destiny of the greatest State, and the life 
of the most beneficent government which the world 
has ever seen. 



CHAPTER XV. 

THE FACTORY SYSTEM. 

Before we can come to a conclusion upon the grave 
question which has issued from our industrial experiences, 
another problem must be discussed and disposed of. 
The factory system is scarcely more than a hundred 
years old, but it has effected greater changes in the con- 
dition of the people, in commerce, in legislation and in 
national policy than any other influence of the eighteenth 
and nineteenth centuries. Received in America, as we 
have already seen, with hesitation, and regarded with 
distrust because of its evil reputation in Europe, most 
people would probably agree that if labour in the States 
has degraded in recent years this has directly resulted 
from the introduction of manufactures. But off-hand 
judgments are rarely just, and there are many things 
to be considered before we can decide that the great and 
growing factory system is a power for evil, be it in 
Europe or America. Meanwhile, it is too late to inquire 
whether it ought or ought not to have been established, 
for established it is, and upon the same basis as modern 



254 THE FACTORY SYSTEM. 

commerce, or, in other words, as modern civilized life, 
with which alone it can perish. 

Although it now embraces all the varied products 
of machinery, the factory system found its first appli- 
cation to textile fabrics, a circumstance which makes 
it easy to compare the new order of things with the 
domestic industry that characterized the operative life of 
the eighteenth century. If there was something idyllic 
about a picture of the old English weaver working at his 
loom, with his family around him carding and spinning 
wool or cotton for his use, that home of industry was 
very different in fact and fiction. Huddled together in 
a hut, whose living and sleeping accommodations were 
curtailed, by the tools of his trade, to limits which left 
little room for decency, the weaver's family lived and 
worked without comfort, convenience, good food, or 
good air. The children became toilers from their 
earliest youth and grew up quite ignorant, no one 
having yet conceived of education, except as a luxury 
of the rich. Theft of materials and drunkenness made 
almost every cottage a scene of crime, want and 
disorder. The grossest superstitions took the place of 
intelligence, health was impossible in the absence of 
cleanliness and pure air, and such was the moral 
atmosphere of labour, that if some family, with more 
virtue than common, tried to conduct themselves so as 
to save their self-respect, they were abused or ostracized 
by their neighbours. 



THE FACTORY SYSTEM. 255 

It was under this system that there arose hi England 
that pauper class, the reproach of civilization, which, 
once created, continued to grow until a fourth of the 
national income scarcely sufficed to support the nation's 
poor. Against the spread of pauperism, indeed, legisla- 
tion and philanthropy seemed alike powerless, and the evil 
was only, at last, checked by the rise of those manu- 
facturing industries which followed upon the inventions 
of Arkwright, Hargreaves and Crompton, and the enter- 
prise of men like Wedgwood. The influence of the newly 
born factory system alone prevented England from being 
overrun, during the latter half of the eighteenth century, 
by the most ignorant and depraved of men, and it was 
only in the factory districts that the demoralizing agency 
of pauperism could be effectually resisted. 

It may of course be urged that no comparisons 
between domestic and factory labour are of any value, 
except in cases where the two systems exist side by 
side, and that the improvement which took place in the 
condition of English operatives, after the introduction 
of the factory system, was due to the general advance of 
civilization. But the two systems were simultaneously in 
force in France down to a very late period, domestic 
industry being, even now, the rule in the country around 
Amiens, while the factory reigns in the city itself. There, 
however, the rural workers have a very bad reputation 
as compared with that of the town operatives. Their 
homes are worse, and are worse kept ; beginning work at 



, 6 THE FACTORY SYSTEM. 

no i-egula,- hou, they idle more and earn n.ore preearious 

Ige: than do the factory hand, and they are .nveterate 

'™"asy to bHng these facts to the test of h.ures. 
French factories are constantly increasing m nunrbe. 
and operatives are being, as constantly dra. n .to 
them and away from the old system. Now, .f the 
n^ilfhas an evil effect on morals, the percentage of 
1LX alocality where a change -^ the^— 
to the factory system is in progress should mcrease 
Ire people come under its influence. But the contrary 
"known to have taken place in the distr.ct ahead 
■^luaed to, wher. between .SS^n-SS^t^e—^^ 

::^ertrt^r:^^";"---v^'r 

mg tne la e^-oense of the domestic 

time, rapidly increasmg at the expense o 

""Economically speaking, it goes without saying that 
the new system is infinitely superior to the old one 
while the previously unheard-of power and wealth that 
h p rung from it are not the sole property o any class 
oJdy of men, but are much more fairly shared than 
they wL under the domestic system. Even the vs.on- 
t =„nnose that the craftsman gains m characte, 

last century. 



THE FACTORY SYSTEM. 257 

Bad as the domestic system was, however, that which 
followed it seemed, at first, scarcely better than its pre- 
decessor. At the moment when the earliest cotton-mills 
arose in England, or about the middle of the eighteenth 
century, the country, as we have seen, was overrun wath 
paupers. The action of the poor law, by penning the 
people into narrow districts, increased laziness and 
immorality in every parish union where the number 
of operatives was greater than the local demand for their 
labour.' Agriculture took advantage of this state of 
things to reduce wages, as nearly as possible, to starva- 
tion level, while unemployed labour was driven into the 
workhouses. Meanwhile, there was scarcely a law upon 
the statute-books of England regulating the relations 
betu-een master and servant, and the few which did 
exist were of a criminal character, enacting punish- 
ments for the most trifling misdeeds of the men, while 
the master retained the same arbitrary powers over 
labour as were bequeathed to him by feudalism. 
English cottages were, at this time, choked with the 
degraded sons and daughters of toil, children of the 
domestic system of industry, who, if they overflowed 
into the factory, were certainly better off there than in 
the workhouse. 

Hence, the new mills were, in the first instance, 
recruited entirely from a foul source, and great towns 
grew up, having populations brutal to a degree which 
it is hard to conceive. No sort of effort was made 

S 



258 THE FACTORY SYSTEM. 

to improve the moral or mental condition of these 
people, no new parishes were created, no new churches 
were built, and of schools there were none, save the 
grammar-schools of Edward and Elizabeth. " There 
was no effective police and, in great outbreaks, the 
mobs of London and Birmingham burnt houses, 
threw open the prisons and pillaged at their will. The 
criminal class gathered boldness and numbers in the 
face of ruthless laws, which only testified to the terror 
of society, laws which strung up twenty young thieves of 
a morning in front of Newgate ; while the introduction 
'^^ g''"* gave a new impetus to drunkenness. In the 
streets of London, gin-shops invited every passer-by 
to get drunk for a penny, or dead drunk for two- 
pence." * 

Such were the disorders that made America hesitate 
before the introduction of a system which had, ap- 
parently, given them birth. They, however, were no 
true children of the mill, but of the vicious system 
of industry, and its accompanying pauperism, which 
had preceded it. With the first and chief parent of 
these evils, legislation, if it had so desired, could do 
nothing, so long as it was entrenched in the Englishman's 
castle, his home ; while, with the second, public moneys 
and private charity struggled bravely but in vain. 

But labour of this degraded and pauperized kind 
could not long be massed together without the abomi- 
* " A Short History of the English People" (Green). 



THE FACTORY SYSTEM. 259 

nations which hid themselves in a thousand obscure 
cottages being brought into the h'ght of day. At first, 
indeed, it seemed as if capital might use the ignorance 
and disability of labour entirely for its own advantage. 
Succeeding to a feudal authority which the law still 
sanctioned, masters exploited their operatives in an 
extreme and unscrupulous manner, and a general 
crowding downwards of the less wealthy by the 
weathiest seemed, for a time, imminent. But this 
process, which had all along been in unnoticed opera- 
tion under the domestic system, could not fail to 
attract the public attention when taking place under 
more conspicuous conditions. Thus, not only did the 
factory system first acquaint the country with the de- 
graded and morally corrupt condition of its working 
population, but it also called attention to the arbitrary 
character of law and custom in their relations to labour 
and, presently, demanded improvement and reform. 
Laissez-faire, who was absolute king at this time, 
made a determined effort to preserve his vested right 
to do wrong if he was so minded, but two important 
events made common cause with the operatives and 
decided the struggle against him. 

The doctrines of Adam Smith, published almost 
simultaneously with the rise of the factory system, had 
already furnished the country with a theory of labour 
and commerce totally new to the eighteenth century. 
Until the publication of the Oxford student's essay, 



26o THE FACTORY SYSTEM. 

in 1776, the trading classes universally considered that 
wealth meant gold and silver, and that commerce was 
best furthered by jealous monopolies. But the great 
author of the " Wealth of Nations " contended that 
labour was the one and only source of wealth, and 
that if this is to be most productive, it must work 
under conditions of absolute freedom. Pitt was the 
first English statesman who, thanks to his study of 
Adam Smith, realized the part that industry was to 
play in promoting the welfare of the world, and the 
public mind of his time soon became penetrated with 
the same pregnant idea. Thus labour, the mere drudge 
of the domestic system and the slave of feudal times, 
began to occupy a new position after the great 
economist had taught men to regard it as the supreme 
source of wealth. 

Previously to this, however, and at the very moment 
that the state of the new factory towns was at its worst, 
a knot of Oxford students, revolting against the religious 
paralysis of the time, originated the great Methodist 
revival, which changed the whole tone and temper of the 
eighteenth century before it had much more than half 
run out. The passionate impulse of human sympathy 
to which the preaching of Whitefield and Wesley gave 
rise was propagated with amazing force and rapidity 
throughout the length and breadth of England. Under 
its influence Wilberforce and Clarkson began their cru- 
sade against the iniquities of the slave trade, then the 



THE FACTORY SYSTEM. 261 

sheet anchor of Liverpool merchants, and, supported by 
it, Howard attacked the abominations of the prison 
system. Labour, itself profoundly moved by the revival 
of religion, was not long without sympathizers in its 
degraded lot, who claimed the right of society to 
interfere, even in the private relations of master and 
man, if these were not based upon justice. 

The first factory act, introduced by Peel, was, indeed, 
of little value to the operative, but it was important 
as an assertion of the right in question, and has been 
followed, especially during the last fifty years, by a great 
deal of wholesome restrictive legislation. Thus the right 
of a master to make a free contract with women and 
children has been abolished. Women may no longer 
overwork themselves, or children remain absolutely 
without education. The factory has been opened to 
public scrutiny and subjected to penalties for being kept, 
cither in a dangerous or unwholesome state, while em- 
ployers have been made liable for all preventible 
accidents to life and limb. This is not the place to 
speak of similar restrictions imposed upon the agricul- 
tural, mining and shipping industries of the country ; it 
suffices for my purposes to show that the factory is no 
longer the castle of its lord, but a quasi-public institu- 
tion, largely under the control of public opinion. 

It is most unfortunate for the reputation of the 
factory system that its origin should have been so 
impure, for this, together with the still low condition 



-62 THE FACTORY SYSTEM. 

of labour, blinds many people to the fact that factory 
populations are, really, much more moral, as they are 
admittedly more intelligent, than other classes of labour. 
The French statistics already quoted arc very^ much to the 
point in this regard, while others from the same source 
could be adduced to show that in certain textile dis- 
tricts of France the operatives contribute only five per 
cent, to the criminal lists. Similarly, Manchester, whose 
factory hands are usually, but unfairly, credited with all 
the crime of a city which is as much a trading as a 
manufacturing centre, is far less stained by the mill than 
is generally supposed. One of its recent penitentiary 
reports, for example, testifies that four times as many 
prostitutes are furnished to the streets from the class of 
domestic sei^vants than by mill-girls, and a careful study 
of any criminal statistics will prove that gaols generally 
are filled from other sources than the factor}-. 

The last, indeed, lends itself, far better than any 
other form of industrial life, to improving and civilizing 
agencies. For a mill, after all, is but an embodiment 
of the principle of association, the only possible basis of 
civilization, and the source of every improvement in the 
condition of man. Association, however, cannot unite 
even two human beings without giving birth to division 
of labour ; for, of two savages, for example, seeking a 
common subsistence, it will be found more convenient 
if one does this and the other that. The family, the 
tribe and the nation are all, obviously, children of asso- 



THE FACTORY SYSTEM. 263 

elation, but so are commerce, the arts, science, litera- 
ture, philosophy, nay even the Christian virtues them- 
selves, which were begotten of human intercourse before 
they were taught by authority. 

The mill, indeed, is simply an establishment wherein 
association turns its attention to production, and seeks 
to supply given wants with the least possible expendi- 
ture of energy. Precisely the same principle binds 
men together for the performance of every human 
task, and even, if the Master's words, "Bear ye one 
another's burdens," are rightly read, for works of 
the Spirit as well as of the flesh. Thus, the factory 
system is founded upon the same rock as the edifice 
of human life itself, and if, like human life, it is full of 
shortcomings, that is the fault, in the one case as in the 
other, of conduct. Its organization is as capable of 
that kind of improvement so happily termed " growth in 
grace " as the human heart itself, for where men are most 
closely associated, there, if any one will teach, it is easiest 
to learn, because most possible to practise, the lessons 
of the Mount. 

We sometimes hear " the masses " and " dense popula- 
tions " spoken of in terms which imply that certain evils 
of society do actually arise from the mere aggregation of 
a number of human beings, or, in other words, that there 
is a point where the admitted blessings of association 
become curses. But great operative cities are not 
wicked because men are overcrowded, they arc over- 



264 THE FACTORY SYSTEM. 

crowded because men are wicked, and the factory system 
which brings these numbers of people together, is not 
only blameless of such evils as arise among them^ but, 
where the social reformer is active, it makes the work 
of improving and civilizing easy. What could the 
" captain of industry " who leads the forces of labour at 
Willimantic do for the improvement of his people but 
for the factory ? What does he not do with its assist- 
ance ? Think of the effectiveness which this lends to 
his libraries and schools ; of the economics it gives 
birth to in his stores ; of the number of healthy and 
happy homes it has enabled him to create. Consider 
the amount of mental friction which accompanies the 
congregation of girls in the class-room and of men 
in the reading-room, and picture the lives which 
his sixteen hundred workers, representing a much 
larger community when the families are added to the 
hands, would have led under the domestic system of 
industry. How far could Colonel Barrows' light have 
shone over a turbid sea of labour, such as that of the 
eighteenth century t How many human ships, freighted 
with souls, may it not have saved from wreck and guided 
into a safe harbour at Willimantic ? 

Every factory in Europe or America could be con- 
verted into a humanizing agency, such as Willimantic is, 
and it would pay owners, to say nothing of their hands, 
for them all to become so. Money-mills of to-day 
might all be " mills of God " to-morrow, producing 



THE FACTORY SYSTEM. 265 

intelligence and morality, with the least possible expendi- 
ture of civilizing effort, because of the assistance that 
association lends, whether to the making of morality 
or of cotton goods. In England, public opinion has 
made the factory system the happy father of popular 
education, which could not help following upon the 
compulsory schooling of operative children. The same 
beneficent agent has stripped the workshop of all 
oppressive, unwholesome and dangerous features, and 
future legislation may be trusted to respect the future 
wants of labour which respects itself In spite of a bad 
beginning and early mal-administration ; in spite of a 
low condition of labour and lower conceptions of its 
claims, the factory system has benefited the English 
operative as no other form of industry has done. Only 
one thing is wanting to make it take rank, not as the 
parent of untold evils, but as one of the most powerful 
civilizing agencies of the nineteenth century. That 
want is one of the oldest in the World, and one of the 
hardest to fill. It is Men. " Captains of industry, the true 
fighters, henceforth recognizable as the only true ones ; 
fighters against chaos and the devil, leaders of mankind 
in this, the great and alone true and universal warfare." * 
Something must be said in answer to those who urge 
that the subdivision of tasks is accompanied by an abase- 
ment of intelligence, and who accuse the factory of 
destroying originality and force in the craftsman. This 

* Carlyle. 



266 THE FACTORY SYSTEM. 

abasement is presumed, not proven. To establish it, 
one must show that the hand-weaver, who himself throws 
the shuttle and rocks the loom, is superior to the machine 
weaver, who merely assists, without producing the 
double movement. That Hodge, sowing seed broadcast, 
and swinging the scythe or flail, is a more intelligent 
being than Hodge, tending the drilling-machine, driving 
the mower and feeding the steam thrasher. Men who 
know the facts are of quite the opposite opinion. They 
who have cooperated in the displacement of manual 
by mechanical power, in any department of industry, 
are painfully aware to what an extent all such efforts 
are handicapped by want of intelligence in the labour 
at command. The object of machinery is to ease 
human muscles, not to spare human brains, from which, 
indeed, it asks severer service in return for the benefits 
conferred on the body. Visionaries who contend that 
the most imperfect machines, those, that is to say, which 
demand the greatest muscular efforts, are they which 
most sharpen the intellectual faculties of the labourer, 
may well be left alone with their own logical petard. 

So far as unskilled labour is concerned, the factory 
is, in truth, an elementary school, open to the lowest grade 
of operatives, ready with promotion into successively 
higher classes for all moderate merits and capacities, and 
offering valuable prizes to exceptional intelligence when- 
ever this is accompanied by the humbler moral virtues. 
But for his own school-boy experiences, the casual visitor 



THE FACTORY SYSTEJf. 267 

of a school could not realize the progressive character of 
this institution. He sees boys reading here, writing 
there, and ciphering elsewhere, and if he returned in 
a year, or in ten years, he would find the same 
three monotonous R's in process of absorption. No- 
thing would indicate that many pupils had passed 
steadily up through all the classes, or that some had left 
the school for the university. Only the schoolmaster 
and the scholars could know what a complicated series of 
changes, dependent upon growth, capacity and character, 
had taken place in the mean time. Similarly, the average 
mill visitor, having no industrial experience, cannot 
possible realize that progression is taking place where 
this is not apparent to the eye. He sees operatives en- 
gaged in various monotonous tasks, as he might observe 
school-boys struggling with " pothooks and hangers," 
but, while he knows that the scholars will one day write, 
he pictures the factory hand as bound to the same spoke 
of the wheel of toil for life. Mill-owners and mill-hands, 
however, like the schoolmaster and his pupils, know that 
the factory is no home of stagnation. On the contrary, 
it is a little world, where, even more easily than in 
the great world, industry and intelligence make their 
own way to the front, and secure their reward. If the 
idle and incompetent continue to gird and grind at the 
same tasks, so do the backward boys at school, and 
" duffers " everywhere, but that is not the fault either of 
the factory or the school system. 



268 THE FACTORY SYSTEM. 

So much for the influence of the factory upon what is 
called unskilled labour ; let us now see how the matter 
stands with the " craftsman," that somewhat fanciful 
being about the loss of whose force and originality 
some people are so anxious. Nowadays, we call the 
craftsman a mechanic ; a presumably past-master in one 
of the mechanical arts, such as carpentering or masonry, 
moulding or fitting. The fitter, or " engineer," as 
Americans always term him, stands confessedly at the 
head of all modern operatives, and there is no other 
craftsman who has been so profoundly influenced by the 
factory system. Carpenters, bricklayers, masons and 
many other high-class artisans have remained, so to 
speak, outside the mill, while the engineer has become its 
very soul. Let us inquire, then, what the factory system 
has done for this, the most highly factorified, highly en- 
dowed and highly paid craftsman of the present day. 

The question answers itself The chief of the opera- 
tive class is himself the son of the factory system, for 
this, if the elementary school of unskilled labour, is the 
Alma Mater of the nineteenth-century artisan. Gather- 
ing its students, whether from the mill itself, or the 
industrial world outside it, and developing their natural 
abilities with extraordinary success, in spite of deficient 
education and foolish trade-society rules, the factory has 
given birth to an army of mechanics — call them craftsmen 
if you will — far more highly skilled than any of their 
predecessors. 



THE FACTORY SYSTEM. 269 

The rare Brindlcys and Tclfords, who led the way 
to conquest over nature in the last centur}-, were 
captains of industry without a disciphned army at 
their backs ; generals whose plans, modest as we think 
them, were scarcely possible of accomplishment, because 
the craftsman was, as yet, little better than a labourer. 
If England now talks of spanning the Forth and tunnel- 
ling the Channel ; if America determines to throw yet 
another three thousand miles of rails across mountain 
ranges and deserts ; if France prepares to join the 
Atlantic with the Pacific, not only are there able leaders 
at hand for all these enterprises, but they march to an 
assured success because mechanics, the soldiers of 
civilization, are an army of veterans now, as they were 
a handful of raw recruits in Brindley and Telford's time. 

This is the direct result of the factory system, to 
which, indeed, we owe our great mechanicians as well 
as the men who follow them. Machinery is only em- 
bodied thought, and from among the many who execute 
arise the few who scheme. Such an one is the inventor 
whom at the very outset of our journey I typified under 
the name of the " Connecticut man." Him, if I may 
venture to quote myself, I described as having his home 
in the factory, and living surrounded by the most refined 
examples of modern machinery. " Here he observes, 
alters, amends and schemes. The pulsating and quasi- 
living beings about him are his children whom he loves, 
and his companions who stimulate him to further pro- 



270 THE FACTORY SYSTEM. 

ductive efforts. The thousand and one wants of the 
world offer him a boundless field for his creative powers, 
and, silently brooding, he brings forth, now and again, 
another wonderful automaton, as a poet produces a verse 
or a musician a melody." 

Abasement of the workman indeed ! Only the 
mentally short-sighted, or blind, could fail to see that 
there are " embodied thoughts " in every cotton-mill 
pin-factory, and clock-shop we have seen, to say nothing 
of the greatest examples of modern mechanical genius, 
which bear the same relation to the craftsman's work 
of earlier centuries as man's reasoned conclusions do to 
the chatter of a child. All these are the offspring of the 
factory system. 

At length we may ask, with some hope of guidance 
to a trustworthy answer — What will be the future of 
labour in America } That it has very generally fallen 
from the high estate it occupied when the factories of 
New England were filled with the children of equality 
and enlightenment, no reader of this volume can doubt, 
and no candid American will deny. It has been conclu- 
sively shown that the introduction of manufactures is not 
responsible for the present state of things which is, in- 
deed, directly traceable to the displacement of native 
American help from the mills by the introduction of 
foreign operatives. Thus, the labour question of to-day 
in New England is of exactly the same character as that 
which confronted Old England at the time when the 



THE FACTORY SYSTEM. 271 

change from the domestic to the factory system of 
industry took place. American mill-owners, however, 
have not to do battle with the crime and brutality of 
that day, but only to conquer the illiteracy and political 
apathy of alien labour. We ourselves are still challenged 
by similar, but native foes, but, low as our labour con- 
ditions remain, they were once infinitely worse. Fifty 
years of factory legislation, and twenty years of popular 
education have accomplished considerable results in 
England, where, unhappily, few sympathize with the 
claims of toil, scarcely any desire to give it an honour- 
able position, and, only once in half a century, an Owen 
or a Salt affirms what labour administration should be, 
and shows what the factory might becpme. 

Matters are different in New England. The legis- 
lature busies itself actively with the concerns of labour ; 
Massachusetts, the chief manufacturing State, main- 
taining a special bureau, which keeps every question 
bearing upon the welfare of the operative well before 
the public ; makes itself a terror to evil-doers, whether 
masters or men, and plentifully supplies the social 
reformer with pregnant and authentic facts, gathered 
with infinite pains, to form the basis of law-making. 
As for the New Englanders themselves, I have written 
to no purpose if my readers do not realize that no- 
where in the world does there exist a more enlightened 
people, greater lovers of freedom, greater friends to 
education, greater honourers of industry. These all 



273 THE FACTORY SYSTEM. 

desire to bring the foreign labourer under the influence of 
the pubHc institutions of the country, poHtical, rehgious 
and educational ; to " make Americans," in short, of 
Irish, Canadians, Teutons and Scandinavians alike. 

And the " Captains of industry," upon whom, more 
than upon State, school. Church, or people, depends the 
future status of their foreign help ; — what arc they 
doing ? Some, as we know, have already heard the call, 
" Arise, save thyself, be one of those that save thy 
country." Willimantic does not stand alone. The 
Cranes at Dalton, the Cheneys at South Manchester, 
Mr. Lock at Waterbury, the Fairbanks at Saint 
Johnsbury, Mr. Hazard at Peacedale, and Mr. Pullman 
at Lake Calumet,— ;-these have all followed the " God-like 
.stirring " within them, and made their factories worthy 
of the self-respecting labour which they have created. If 
I do not name many other similar establishments, that is 
only for want of personal acquaintance with examples 
of a movement that is spreading rapidly in the States, 
and outstripping, wherever it occurs, the combined work 
of the pulpit and the school, in the service of humanity. 

And this movement will gain force as it goes. Out- 
side the simply luxurious classes, more conspicuous in 
New York than elsewhere, a true idea of the function 
of wealth has arisen in America, where it must be 
remembered that there were practically no rich men 
previously to the war. In New England, particularly, 
the responsibilities of the rich are being constantly 



THE FACTORY SYSTEM. 273 

insisted upon, and, as constantly, acknowledged in a 
variety of ways, of which the model factory is one 
and the gift of free libraries to cities and towns another. 
New England, the heart of America, conceives that man 
the richest who, having perfected his own life as far as in 
him lies, exercises the widest influence for good, whether 
by his character, or his money, over the lives of others, 
and that nation the richest which contains the greatest 
number of noble and happy human beings. To the 
action of this belief, which, in spite of dollar-worship 
moulds, as I believe, the conduct of an increasing number 
of lives in New England, we may, I think hopefully, leave 
the future of American labour, dark, by comparison 
with earlier conditions, as its present seems. 



CHAPTER XVI. 

LABOUR, WAGES, AND THE TARIFF. 

It would be unsatisfactory, not to say absurd, if, after 
spending so much time in the workshops of New 
England, we left them without a word about American 
wages. That word has, however, been purposely post- 
poned, because the question of wages in America is 
too intimately mixed up with that of protective duties 
for either to be separately discussed, while, hitherto, 
it has been convenient to avoid talking of the tariff 
at all. 

Labour in the United States has been sedulously 
educated, both by public men and the press, to believe 
that protective taxation makes wages high, while the 
employers urge that, having to pay high wages, they 
must be protected from foreign competition in order 
to prosper, or even to live. The protective legislator 
promises to satisfy both parties with one measure, but 
as he cannot make wages low, and it would sound 
badly to talk of making prices high by means of 



LABOUR, WAGES, AND THE TARIFF. 275 

taxation, he affirms that, after all, tariffs lower prices. 
Hence arises a paradox, which astonishes and even 
confounds the industrial inquirer in the States, where 
he finds employers asking for a law that will presumably 
raise wages, and producers for a measure intended to 
lower the prices of their products. 

The idea that wages are determinable by the 
tariff is the corner-stone of American protection. The 
operative fully believes that his prosperity is bound 
up with the protective system. The farmer, anxious, 
above all things, for the greatest possible number of well- 
to-do customers, lends his support to proposals for 
making the artisan rich by Act of Congress. Capi- 
talists, becoming manufacturers from ostensibly patriotic 
motives, declare their desire to keep wages at such a 
level as will enable labour to live at some assumed 
standard of comfort, due to the dignity and self-respect 
of the American artisan. In return, they ask to be 
protected from foreign competition, and while posing as 
benefactors to their country, whose interests, in the 
public opinion, demand that America should become 
the home of manufacturing industry, are abundantly 
rewarded by the power to fix their own prices in a close 
market. 

It is, however, easy to show that wages in the States 
are determined, not in the factory, but on the farm ; 
not by protection, but by free trade. Out of a total 
population of fifty millions, there are seventeen and a 



276 LABOUR, WAGES, AND THE TARIFF. 

half millions of workers in the United States, the re- 
mainder being dependents. Nearly eight millions of the 
workers are engaged in agriculture, and less than three 
millions in manufacturing industries, while of the total 
produce raised by the former class, two-thirds is con- 
sumed in the country, and the remaining third, repre- 
senting almost the whole foreign trade of the States, is 
exported. The prices which these surplus exports realize 
are clearly determined in the markets where they are 
sold, of which Liverpool is the chief, and they will be 
high or low, according as the harvests of the world are 
good or bad. Similarly, the wages which can be paid to 
American labour engaged in the production of food-stuffs 
must depend on the amount of money obtained in ex- 
change for them, and, as the great majority of workers 
are so engaged, their rates of wages will regulate those 
in every other branch of business. Wages, like water, seek 
a level, and labour will quit the field for the workshop, 
or the workshop for the field, as this or that pays best. 
Thus agriculture is the paymaster whom American 
manufacturers must outbid, and agricultural wages are 
determined in the free-trade markets of the world. 

A glance at the condition of industry in America 
vividly illustrates this conclusion. A population, still 
very sparse, is, for the most part, engaged in gathering 
where it has not sown. Any man with a few dollars, 
and a strong pair of arms, can win far greater rewards 
from the cheap and fertile soil of the States than he could 



LABOUR, WAGES, AND THE TARIFE. 277 

possibly obtain by the same amount of effort in Europe. 
His wages are high because the grade of comfort to 
be obtained from the land by a little labour is high, and 
the artisan's wages must follow suit if the immigrant is 
to be tempted from the field into the workshop. But 
the politicians would have us believe that American 
labour owes its prosperity to taxation, in other words, 
that the immigrant comes seeking to enjoy, not the rich 
prizes with which the untouched earth rewards his toil, 
but the blessings that flow from a prohibitive tariff which 
adds an average forty-three per cent, to the cost of every 
human requirement except food. 

Turning from so transparent a sophism, let us now 
look at the notion, that high wages make protective 
taxes necessary to the prosperity of all, and to the very 
life of some manufacturing industries in America. The 
obvious answer to this proposition is that wages are only 
one item among many in the cost of every manufactured 
article, and a manufacturer who cannot pay the current 
rates of wages without loss is misapplying his money, 
while the law does a serious injury to the community by 
making it contribute to keep such a business on its legs. 
If wages and profits always displaced each other, and 
no employer could make profits if he paid high wages, 
this would be equivalent to saying that America would 
do better to avoid manufacturing altogether and stick 
to selling her high-priced agricultural labour in foreign 
markets, where she can obtain the results of two days' 



278 LABOUR, WAGES, AND THE TARIFF. 

toil in exchange for that of one. Every American, in- 
deed, would be ready to admit, in general terms, the truth 
of this elementary position, but, being extremely anxious 
to make his country independent of others for the 
supply of all her wants, he would deny its applicability 
to the United States. So far as they are concerned, he 
would aver that, although it suffers at first, the com- 
munity gains at last, by nursing industries which, after 
they have learnt to run alone, will represent an increase 
in the national wealth and power. 

Now it is evident that no industry can ever run alone 
in America so long as her wages are higher than those of 
Europe if, as almost all Americans appear to believe, the 
question of who can compete with whom is one of com- 
parative wages only. But there is, in truth, no such simple 
relation between wages and profits, for the latter depend 
upon a large number of conditions of which labour is 
only one. Both may be, and generally are, high or low 
together, capital and labour each earning more money in 
good, and less money in bad times. It suits American 
protectionists to shut their eyes to this fact, one of the 
commonplaces of commerce, while they cry, " We cannot 
compete with the pauper labour of Europe." Yet the 
competitor they most fear is England, who, with wages 
higher than those of any country on the Continent, dis- 
tances all her European rivals in cheapness of production. 
In the same way, the American farmer, paying very 
high wages, and handicapped by the cost of transport, 



LABOUR, WAGES, AND THE TARIFF. 279 

beats the " pauper labour of Europe " in its own mar- 
kets, certain conditions, of more moment than wages, 
being favourable in both these cases. 

There is, in fact, no more untrustworthy guide to the 
relative cost of any products than mere comparative 
statements of wages. Protectionist zeal takes care that 
these, whether accurate or not, shall abound in the public 
documents of the States, and they are constantly 
appealed to as unanswerable arguments in favour of 
protection. But zeal, as usual, proves too much, or 
whence the hope that manufactures will, some day, run 
alone in America ? This comes from the conviction, 
whose expression all the clamour for protection cannot 
stifle, that the possibilities of American manufactures are 
not bounded by the price of labour alone, but are largely 
influenced by other considerations, upon which, however, 
it is not the interest of capital to enlarge. 

How important these considerations sometimes are 
will best appear from an illustration. The reaping- 
machine is one of the most labour-saving of all farm 
implements, accomplishing the work of twenty men 
using the sickle. All the grain grown in America is 
cut by the reaper, as a matter of course, and if we 
suppose that the hired man who tends it is paid three 
times as much as an English farm labourer, there is 
clearly room to save a third of twenty, or, say, six out of 
every seven pounds paid for his harvest by the English far- 
mer who does not employ a machine. 



28o LABOUR, WAGES, AND THE TARIFF. 

That the use of the reaper is much less common, and 
the cost of harvesting consequently greater in England 
than in America, is the direct result of the low price of 
agricultural labour in the latter country. The Western 
farmer cannot afford to reap by hand, but such of his 
British confreres as use the sickle, are tempted to be 
lavish by the very cheapness of the labour at their com- 
mand. They know that a reaper costs considerable 
money, but do not realize how much it saves. They 
know that the machines must be tended by intelligent 
men, but they dislike the trouble of either finding, train- 
ing, or themselves supplying the required skill. Mean- 
while, vaguely thinking of labour as " cheap," they end 
by paying six times as much for a given service as the 
farmer whose labour is dear. Here, then, is an instance 
in which any calculation as to the relative cost of harvest 
in England and America,baseduponthedifference between 
agricultural wages in the two countries, would be totally 
fallacious, nor does the case stand by any means alone. 

It might well be supposed that if two competitors, 
have equal access to a given labour-saving appliance, 
both would seek to obtain the same advantages from it ; 
but, in practice, the cheap-labour man is always behind 
the dear-labour man, whether in the invention or appli- 
cation of labour-saving devices. There are, indeed, certain 
industries, such as the textiles, whose machinery, English 
in its origin, has been so long perfected, if machinery can 
ever be called perfected, that they might seem independ- 



LABOUR, WAGES, AND THE TARIFF. 281 

ent of this rule, but facts can be adduced which favour 
its application even to exceptional cases of this kind. 
The textiles, however, do not employ quite two and a 
half per cent, of the whole working population of America, 
and should not be allowed to prejudice the case of free 
trade so long as, aside from them, American manufac- 
tures generally offer a boundless field for the cultiva- 
tion of economy. 

Meanwhile, we have already seen how warmly the 
American mind welcomes improvement ; we know that 
the Connecticut man, our typical American mechanic, 
lives chiefly to save labour, and that labour appreciates 
the value to itself of the mechanic's function. In 
England these characteristics are replaced by the love of 
the " ancient ways," by the schemer fettered with trade- 
society rules, and by operatives who dislike all labour- 
saving appliances because they " make work scarce." 
Surely these considerations must count for something in 
estimating the relative cost of English and American 
production, while they would become still more weighty 
if the contrast lay between the States and other 
European countries. Further than this ; my sketch of 
native labour, which, after all, leavens the foreign lump, 
must be very faulty if it fails to make the reader realize 
the high principles, temperate habits and unusual ardour 
of the American operative. His principles compel him 
faithfully to keep the bargain he makes for the sale 
of his labour ; he is a steady worker because a temperate 



282 LABOUR, WAGES, AND THE TARIFF. 

man, and his ardour gives him a remarkable interest 
in whatever he undertakes to do. 

Such were the considerations which suggested to my 
mind that American wages, if nominally fifty per cent, 
higher than those of England, might perhaps effect fifty 
per cent, more work, and thus, measured by production, 
the only true test of value, prove to be really no costlier 
in the one country than the other. The following 
example will demonstrate that this is, sometimes at any 
rate, the case, and that, in spite of the " pauper labour " 
cry, many mechanical industries are actually carried on 
in the States with as much advantage as in England, so 
far as labour is concerned ; a more skilful organization and 
more active workmen redressing the economical balance 
which would otherwise be overweighted by high wages. 

Agricultural implements form an important branch 
of manufacture in America, where a brisk demand for 
these tools is met by a keenly competitive supply, 
which has brought prices considerably below English 
levels. Having an intimate personal acquaintance with 
the cost of such goods in England, I gratefully welcomed 
the access which the extreme kindness of friends, the 
owners of a famous American implement factory, gave 
me to certain figures, usually quite inaccessible to 
outsiders, which completely confirmed my surmises. 

I was thus enabled to make an accurate comparison 
between the cost of production in America and in 
England, and that in an industry which employs so 



LABOUR, WAGES, AND THE TARIFF. 283 

many different classes of mechanics that my conclusions 
may very properly be extended to a number of other 
manufacturing establishments. The comparison may 
further be relied upon as absolutely fair, the goods in 
both cases being practically identical, and the English 
cost of production standing as low as a very large output, 
skilful management and a strict piece-work system 
could make it. Such are the circumstances under which 
I found that, measured by production, and not by the 
day-wages rates, English and American labour values 
are practically identical, the fractional difference being 
actually in favour of the American maker. 

The skilled artisans in the factory in question, working 
by the piece, earned each an average of four pounds a 
week, while the unskilled labourer received thirty-three 
shillings a week day-wages. In the English factory with 
which it was compared, while a few men, holding the 
position, so to speak, of contractors, and paying a 
number of underhands, made four and even five pounds 
a week, the average rate of wages earned by skilled and 
unskilled labour together was no more than one pound 
per man per week. 

In view of these figures, and carefully keeping 
actual costs out of sight, the American protectionist 
might easily catch uninstructed ears with the hollow 
cry, "We cannot compete with the pauper labour 
of Europe," while, as a matter of fact, not only is 
the concern in question making agricultural machines 



284 LABOUR, WAGES, AND THE TARIFF. 

as cheaply as any, and more cheaply than some 
English houses, but exporting them to this country, 
where, selling at the current prices of similar goods, they 
realize more than they do in the States. 

Trustworthy comparisons of this kind are, from 
the very nature of things, extremely difficult to obtain, 
but one such reaches a long way, while there are abun- 
dant indications that, thanks to the causes already set 
forth, many American makers are quite able to compete 
on equal terms with their foreign rivals, even in goods 
whose cost consists chiefly of labour. There are now 
settled in London several American merchants, who im- 
port hundreds of different Yankee articles for home and 
colonial consumption, and these not mere trifles, like 
apple-parers and cheap clocks, but such essentially 
English specialties as machine-tools for the use of 
engineers, the produce of highly skilled labour. Every 
maker, indeed, with whom I talked in New England, the 
textiles excepted, was either already an exporter to a 
small extent, or confident of his power to become so if 
he " could only get his raw materials free of duty," and 
almost feverishly anxious for a " wider market." 

The fact is that, already, America begins to find 
where the shoe pinches, and to suffer for her self-imposed 
isolation from the markets of the world. Her wages, 
measured by production, being, as we have seen, by no 
means burdensome, it will readily be understood how 
lucrative the protected industries must have been before 



LABOUR, WAGES, AND THE TARIFF. 285 

prices were moderated by competition, and how eagerly 
capital would therefore rush into them. This, it did, 
often without technical knowledge, and always with 
little care for economy, because inordinate profits were 
upheld by duties which, giving to gatherers who had not 
strewn, made careful management needless. 

The results are already visible to the most super- 
ficial obsei'ver of commercial affairs in the States, and 
may be illustrated by the typical case of the American 
Screw Company. This great concern, which makes almost 
all the wood-screws used in America, cannot establish a 
foreign trade because of the duty upon its raw material, 
wire. Labour is not a burdensome item in the cost of 
production, for screws are made by automatic machines, 
of which one person tends a greater number in Providence 
than in Birmingham, but the concern has to pay forty per 
cent, more than the European market-price for its wire. 
This was a matter of little consequence to the company so 
long as it had few home, as it has no foreign, competitors, 
because the profits earned during that happy period 
were enormously high. It is even said that the mill 
in question once kept nothing but a cash account, 
paying for its materials, as it paid for its labour, 
once a month in dollars, and dividing the balance of 
profit, which was enormous, also in hard cash, monthly. 
Such a state of things could not last very long, and, 
in the course of time, capital, anxious to share in the 
plunder, built no less than forty screw-making works in 



286 LABOUR, WAGES, AND THE TARIFF. 

the States, of which, after an internecine struggle, only 
fourteen survive to the present day, these, together, 
being more than able to supply all the home demand for 
wood-screws. 

Internal competition has, indeed, begun its inevitable 
work. [Even the American market is not infinite in 
capacity, especially for goods at protective prices, 
so that, of the numerous mills which the desire to share 
in protected profits called into being, many are now 
shortening time, while others are " shutting down " 
altogether. " Over-production " is a word in every 
maker's mouth, the desire for a foreign market in every 
maker's heart, while industrial America is, at the present 
moment, preparing to wait, idly and gloomily, for the 
wants of the country to reduce her surplus stocks.* 

But, the philosophic few apart, men who sigh for 
wider markets approve the duties which bar them from 
those markets, saying, " See how prosperous we have 
been under protection ! " while they whisper despairingly 
into the ears of free-trade visitors, " If we could only 
have our raw materials free ! " Bemoaning the loss of 
their old profits, which they attribute to the tariff, they 
fully understand that something must be done to secure 
new markets, while they fail to see that protection 
has itself killed monopoly, "the goose which laid 
the golden eggs." 

* This was written several months before the occurrence of the financial 
crisis of May, 1884. 



LABOUR, WAGES, AND THE TARIFF. 7.87 

And now, what are " raw materials " ? Sheet-brass 
for the clock-shops, and wire for the pin-shops, of the 
Naugatuck valley. Leather for the bootmakers of North 
Adams and Lynn, wood-pulp for the paper-mills of 
Dalton and Holyoke. Iron and steel for the great gun- 
shops of Hartford, which already, in spite of " dear 
labour," supply the world with rifles, and so on in every 
other industry. But these things are not raw materials, 
they are manufactured products, to ask for any one of 
which duty free is a very lob-sided kind of protection, 
while to ask for them all duty free is free trade. If 
the mill-owners of New England were, altogether, 
to proclaim upon the house-tops that nothing short of 
free raw materials will rescue them from the dangerous 
position into which internal competition has brought 
them, the American tariff would forthwith begin to 
dwindle, and American manufacturers take the first 
steps towards those open markets for want of access to 
which the trade of to-day is languishing. 

That I am not speaking in figures upon the stagna- 
tion of American manufactures, let figures themselves 
declare. The progress of manufactures in any country 
can be more accurately measured by the statistics of the 
coal trade than by any less comprehensive gauge. Test- 
ed in this way, protectionist America makes a poor 
showing beside free-trade England, for while the coal 
product of the latter country increased by fifty per cent., 
comparing the decade ending in 1880 with the decade 



288 LABOUR, WAGES, AND THE TARIFF. 

ending in 1870, the output of coal in America actually 
diminished during the same period. 

Why, then, does not the American maker, than whom 
no shrewder man exists, cry aloud for that which, with 
many protestations of being no free-trader, he tells you, 
sotto voce, he needs — Raw materials free ? Because, 
and here we return to the point whence we started, 
labour will not have it. The working man in the States 
has been sedulously taught, as we have already seen, 
that the tariff lifts his lot high above that of the " pauper 
labour " of Europe. He does not know that the distance 
dividing these levels is narrower than his teachers tell 
him, but their doctrine is so seductively simple that, 
buttressed by selfishness, it holds a very strong posi- 
tion in the popular mind. The " pauper labour of 
Europe " was a splendid text for capital to preach 
from, when a high tariff meant inflated prices and 
enormous profits for all kinds of manufactured goods ; 
but internal competition is rapidly changing all that, 
and will change the protectionist's gospel itself ere 
long. In strict proportion to their eagerness for 
foreign markets, American manufacturers will presently 
realize that they possess advantages, in readiness to 
learn, quickness to adapt and skill to organize, over every 
other nation in the world, while the labour they command 
is high principled, intelligent and industrious in no 
common degree. Men with such cards in their hands 
will not hesitate to sit down for a commercial rubber with 



LABOUR, WAGES, AND THE TARIFF. 289 

Europe when protected manufacture has degenerated, 
as it is already rapidly doing, into a game of beggar my 
neighbour. 

The real trouble will arise with labour, which will not 
leave the fool's paradise in which it now lives until wiser 
men than its old masters have taught it that to remain 
means industrial ruin. The first step, however, towards 
effecting a change in the attitude of America towards 
the tariff is, fortunately, easy. The great mass of labour 
ernployed in agriculture in the States seldom stops work 
to reckon how much it pays for the fancied purpose of 
keeping the national wages at a high level. A little 
treatise on " The Western Farmer of America," by Mr. 
Augustus Mongredien, should be in the hands of every 
American agriculturist, and its vigorous sketch of what 
the tariff really does for him before every farmer's 
eyes. Summarizing this economist's figures in a few 
sentences, we learn that the average annual expendi- 
ture of the agricultual population of America is 
about seventy millions sterling. Of this sum how- 
ever, only fifty millions produce an adequate return 
for the money spent, the remaining twenty millions 
being squandered in paying, at the rate of fourteen 
pounds instead of ten, for all the commodities of life. 
A yearly loss of twenty millions, amounting to 
twelve pounds per annum individually, does not, of 
course, destroy the farmer's profits, but is a very serious 
national loss nevertheless. 

U 



290 LABOUR, WAGES, AND THE TARIFF. 

And, incredible as it may seem, this money is as 
absolutely wasted as it would be in hiring an army 
of men to dig holes and fill them up again. Apart 
from the cost of its collection, towards which the 
farmer contributes a million, all the rest is handed 
over to the manufacturers of the Eastern States, whose 
very claim for protection, a claim which the country 
admits, is a denial of inordinate profits. Thus, the 
farmer spends twenty millions a year in trying to enrich 
the manufacturer who, instead of being benefited, 
suffers with his would-be benefactor a proportionate 
loss on his yearly expenditure, from exactly the same 
causes. 

Great as the evil is, its removal is easy, but the 
remedy lies in the hands of the farmers. They have 
simply to say to every candidate for Congress, " Will 
you vote for a reduction of five per cent, every successive 
year on the import duties till the whole are abolished .'' " 
The voting power of the farmers is overwhelming. 
Scarcely knowing their own strength, they are the back- 
bone of the Republic. They own most of its soil, 
they have created most of its wealth, and they form the 
most numerous and influential body among its popula- 
tion ; it is only for them to signify that they will no 
longer bear the unjust burden of protective taxation, 
and it will melt away. 

What would be the result of this upon the manu- 
facturing interests of the country } Let one of the most 



LABOUR, WAGES, AND THE TARIFF. 291 

eloquent free-traders in Congress, Mr. Hewitt, the 
member for New York, reply to this question. " The 
transition," from protection to free trade, " may be made 
gradually and naturally, but if we continue to dam up 
the stream of progress, it may come accompanied by a 
convulsion that will shatter the very framework of our 
society. If the change is provided for by intelligent 
legislation, we shall begin by exporting our coarse 
cottons, as we did before the war ; we shall extend the 
foreign markets for our admirable products of steel and 
iron, and gradually supplant England in the markets 
of the world with the productions which we can turn out 
at a less cost in labour than will be possible for her 
to do, after paying freights on our raw cotton and our 
food. The primacy of industry will be transferred from 
the Old World to the New, and this without impairing 
our ability to pay the higher rate of wages due to 
cheaper food, lower taxes, and greater personal intelli- 
gence in work." * 

This is no illusory anticipation, and, concerned as we 
now are solely with America, it is important enough to 
turn our thoughts for a moment to English interests. It 
is impossible not to foresee that the United States will, 
in the end, become the greatest manufacturing country 
of the world, although the result may be immensely 
retarded by the endless evils which spread like weeds 

* Speech of the Hon. A. S. Hewitt, delivered in the House of Repre 
sentatives, March 30, 1882. 



292 LABOUR, WAGES, AND THE TARIFF. 

over a country where protection has long prevailed. But, 
sooner or later, the day will come when American enter- 
prise shall enter, unshackled, the markets of the world, 
and, plume ourselves as we may on the fact that, in 
spite of hostile tariffs, we send yearly twenty-five millions 
of manufactured goods into the States, while they only 
return us three millions, that will be a black, or a 
bright day for England, as we ourselves shall make it. 
Mr. Hewitt's last words are a warning. If, when 
America adopts free trade, we have not gained that 
" greater personal intelligence in work," which it is one 
of the objects of this book to show that she already 
possesses, then, indeed, it may be feared that the industrial 
supremacy of the Old World may pass into the hands of 
the Newc Let us look to it, while the battle of free trade 
rages across the Atlantic, as rage it soon will, that we 
import some American readiness and grip into our board- 
rooms and offices, some sense of the dignity of labour 
into our workshops. It is not cheap coal, as, it is 
not cheap labour, that gives us our present industrial 
supremacy in Europe. This is the child of intelli- 
gence applied to production, and our cheaper labour 
will avail us no more against the coming transatlantic 
competitor, when his native wit has been sharpened by 
free trade, than that of Europe avails her against 
ourselves. 

To return, and to conclude with the question — What 



LABOUR, WAGES, AND THE TARIFF. 293 

is likely to happen if America delays too long to 
reform her tariff? Mr. Hewitt shall answer again, 
^' Our capacity to produce is now fully equal to our 
wants, and in most branches of business there are 
already indications that the demand is not fully equal 
to the supply. If, when the surplus comes, it cannot 
get an outlet, then it will not be produced ; a portion 
of our labour will be unemployed, and no increase in 
the tariff, not even if the existing rates of duty were 
doubled, would provide an adequate remedy in such 
an emergency. Should these circumstances coincide 
with good harvests abroad, we shall have a great 
surplus of food upon our hands, and the price will 
fall ; wages will go down with the fall in price ; 
the reduction of wages will be resisted by strikes and 
lockouts ; the conflicts between capital and labour will 
be reopened, and have indeed already begun ; the 
prosperity of the country will be arrested ; there will 
be a dearth of employment all over it ; the volume 
of immigration will fall off, and the career of expansion 
and general development will be brought to a disastrous 
conclusion ; — the sad experience of 1873-79 will be 
repeated until, passing through the gates of suffering, 
poverty and want, the products of the country, weighted 
as they are with obstructive taxes, which must be 
deducted from the wages of labour, will force their way 
into the open markets of the world in spite of the tariff 



294 LABOUR, WAGES, AND THE TARIFF. 

We shall then reach the era of free trade, but upon 
conditions which will deprive this generation of workmen 
of all the benefits they would have derived from it if the 
way had been properly prepared for its final triumph. 
Free trade must come, and, with wise statesmanship, the 
transition may be made, not only without disaster or 
suffering, but with immense benefit to the general welfare. 
With a failure to comprehend the situation, however, 
it will come through convulsions and revolutions, from 
the suffering and horrors of which I prefer to turn away 
in silence. 

" But there is one aspect of the case to which I can- 
not shut my eyes. The whole structure and genius of 
our government must be changed to meet the primary 
necessity which will thus arise for preserving social 
order. With the general occurrence of strikes and lock- 
outs will come, as in the case of the railroad riots in 
1877, the demand for the presence of troops, force will 
be met by force, a larger standing army will be demanded 
by public opinion and conceded by Congress, and the 
powers and rights of States will be subordinated to the 
superior vigour and resources of the national govern- 
ment. With a large standing army, acting as a national 
police, under an omnipotent executive, the era of free 
government will have passed away, and all that freedom 
has gained in a thousand years by the heroic struggles 
of our forefathers, or our own resistance to tyranny in the 



LABOUR, WAGES, AND THE TARIEF. 295 

new world, will be put in peril. Such a calamity can 
never come about except by the people of this country, 
and their representatives on this floor, failing to com- 
prehend the spirit and neglecting the warnings of the 
time." * 



* Speech of the Hon. A. S. Hewitt, delivered in the House of Repre- 
sentatives, March 30, 1882. 



CHAPTER XVII. 

BOSTON. 

An Englishman arriving for the first time at Boston is 
conscious of very different emotions from those with 
which he first beholds New York. Here, from the 
moment of landing to leaving, everything suggests the 
present and future ; nothing even whispers of the past. 
He seems to sojourn in a great camp, elbowed by the 
excited soldiery of civilization, who march to unkown 
conquests, following the flag of fortune. The rudeness of 
some, and the luxury of other surroundings remind him, 
now of a soldier's rough quarters, now of the pomp of 
some great commander's tent. Mentally, he sees, every- 
where, the preparation for a campaign, and hears, from 
dawn to dark, the trumpets of progress harshly braying. 
Boston, on the other hand, is, like London, a city 
where commerce is a reigning king, rather than a mili- 
tary chief planning new invasions. Hence, while one 
talks of Wall Street and the Produce Exchange, of the 
Elevated Railroad and the Brooklyn Bridge, of Centra 



BOSTON. 297 

Park, Fifth Avenue, and of the " world, the flesh and 
the devil " in New York, one thinks, in Boston, of 
Miles Standish and the Puritan settlers, of General 
Gage and the Boston Boys, of the Stamp Act and the 
tea-ships, of Lexington and national independence. 

Whether Miles Standish was really the first white 
man who ever landed on the shore of what is now 
Boston harbour is a matter of conjecture. Certain it is, 
however, that this stout Puritan soldier, "broad in the 
shoulders, deep chested, with muscles and sinews of 
iron," sailed with some ten companions from the Plymouth 
colony and landed upon the peninsula in 162 1, "partly 
to see the country, partly to make peace with the 
Massachusetts Indians, and partly to procure their 
truck." After being feasted with lobsters and cod-fish, 
Standish made a treaty of friendship with Obbatinewat, 
the native lord of the soil, and the party returned to the 
bleak home of the Pilgrim Fathers, with a considerable 
quantity of beaver, a good report of the place, and 
■" wishing we had seated ourselves there." 

Five years after this, the first visit of the English to 
Boston harbour, the Rev. William Blackstone, an 
eccentric episcopal minister, squatted upon the peninsula, 
where he built a small cottage and lived a solitary life. 
Presently, in 1630, came Governor Winthrop from 
England, leading the party of Puritans who, as we know, 
founded the colony of Massachusetts Bay, and who, 
four years after their first settlem.ent, bought, for thirty 



298 BOSTON. 

pounds, forty-four of the fifty acres which Blackstone 
claimed, setting them aside as a training field and for 
the feeding of cattle. Disliking the supremacy of the 
" Lords Brethren," as much as he had previously disliked 
that of the Lords Bishops, Blackstone left Boston after 
the sale of his property, every acre of which may 
still be trodden by the curious, for the training field of 
1634 is the Boston Common of to-day. 

The Indians called the peninsula Shawmut, a name 
which the first English settlers changed to Trimountain, 
still surviving in Tremont Street, but soon giving way to 
Boston. The Puritans, though they had been persecuted 
at home, had not suffered so much as the Pilgrims, and 
felt much more kindly than they towards the mother 
country. " We will not say," cried Francis Higginson, 
sailing for Massachusetts Bay as Winthrop's pioneer, 
' like the Separatists, ' Farewell, Babylon ! Farewell, 
Rome ! ' But we will say, ' Farewell ! the Church of 
God in England, and all the Christian friends there.' " 
Hence, remembering with love their old pastor, the 
Rev. John Cotton, of Boston, in Lincolnshire, who was 
soon to be among them, and thinking tenderly of 
their old fenland home, the men of the second May- 
fiower called their town Boston. 

Let us put ourselves back two centuries and a half, 
and take a peep at the new metropolis of a New 
England during its earliest youth. The period was that 
of the first Charles, and, little as we realize it when we 



BOSTON. 299 

think of the pioneers of America, the dress, manners, 
and customs of the settlers all bore the stamp of the 
time. People of condition wore short cloaks, doublets, 
and silk stockings, and even carried rapiers, as in 
England ; while the simpler sort, like Longfellow's Miles 
Standish, were clad in " doublet and hose, with boots of 
Cordovan leather." Steeple-crowned hats, under which 
the elders wore velvet caps, covered, here the cropped 
hair of a roundhead, there the long, but uncurled locks 
of laxer heads. These people lived in cottages made of 
earth or logs, one-story high, with very steep, thatched 
roofs, through which a clay-plastered log chimney pro- 
truded. Entering any one of these, we should have found 
the fireplace made of rough stones, with logs, four feet in 
length, burning on the hearth, which was large enough 
for the children to sit in the corners and look up at the 
sky. Every house faced exactly south, so that the sun 
shone square into it at noon, and told the family that it 
was time to dine. Such was the economy of the times, 
that Governor Winthrop reproved his deputy that " he did 
not well to bestow so much cost about wainscotting and 
adorning his house, both in regard of public charges and 
example." To which reproof, Thomas Dudley made 
modest answer, " that it was but for warmth, and the 
charge little, being but clap-board, nailed to the wall, in 
the form of wainscot." 

" Let it never be forgotten," said one of the early 
Puritan preachers, " that our New England was originally 



300 BOSTON. 

a plantation of religion, and not a plantation of trade. 
And if there be a man among you who counts religion 
as twelve and the world as thirteen, let such a one 
remember that he hath neither the spirit of a true New 
England man nor yet of a sincere Christian." Hence, 
it is fitting that we should view the church before we 
glance at the street or the market, vvhich last, indeed, 
formed a very minor interest of life in early Puritan 
days. 

On sabbath mornings, at nine o'clock, a drum 
was beaten, a conch sounded, or a bell rung to summon 
the people to the meeting-house. This was a log hut, 
fenced around with stakes, its entrance guarded by a 
sentinel in armour, in whose charge the men, as they 
passed within, left their muskets, always kept ready at 
hand to repel an Indian attack. The congregation was 
separated according to age, rank and sex, the old men 
here, the young men there, the young women elsewhere, 
and the boys upon the pulpit stairs. Constables, armed 
with wands, each with a hare's foot at the end, paraded 
the little aisles, and if a woman slept, a touch of the 
hare's foot on her forehead aroused her ; if a boy snored, 
the other end of the stick sharply reminded him where 
he was. Three, and even four times was the great hour- 
glass beside the minister turned before his morning's 
wrestle with the spirit of evil was over, yet might no 
man absent himself from the service under pain of being 
found by the " tithing men," haled to the church, and 



BOSTON. 301 

afterwards fined, or, should he be absent for a month, the 
pubHc stocks were his punishment. 

Once a month, a muster of " soldiers " took place on 
the training ground, in other words, every man over six- 
teen years of age presented himself for drill. They were 
armed with ten-foot pikes and matchlocks, and wore 
steel helmets and breastplates, or thickly padded and 
quilted coats, which could turn an Indian arrow. On 
other days, the same men, dressed in civil costume and 
wearing clean ruffs, assembled in the town meeting, and 
gravely discussed the affairs of the town and interests 
of the Church. If a vote were taken, they put either a 
kernel of corn or a bean into the ballot-box, as they 
wished to say " yes " or " no." 

The laws which they made were more severe than 
wise. No strangers might live in the town without 
giving bonds of indemnification and for good behaviour. 
No one might even entertain travellers without leave of 
the select men. Sobriety was enjoined by law, although 
the sale of liquors was licensed, but no man might use 
tobacco in the street under penalty of a shilling fine. 
To speak evil of the ministry was a heinous offence, and 
to be absent from meeting a crime. The watch were 
instructed that if, after ten o'clock, they saw lights, to 
inquire if there be warrantable cause ; if they heard 
vain singing, to admonish the singers ; if they found 
young men and maidens walking together, "modestly 
to demand the cause, and if they appear ill-minded, to 



302 BOSTON. 

command them to go to their lodgings, and, if they 
refuse, then to secure them till morning." 

Which, after all, was better ? The age of faith, fear- 
ing above all things to do wrong and interfering in all 
the affairs of life, even to persecution, with the object 
of making a virtuous people, or the morality of 
the present time ? Answer be it to say that these 
same Puritans, with all their godliness, could not see 
that slavery was wrong. Negroes were first brought to 
Boston, in the ship Desire, as early as 1638, and, in spite 
of some efforts to put down the traffic, slavery steadily 
gained ground in the colony, until, at length, negroes 
were offered for sale in the public prints of Massachusetts 
as openly as in those of the Southern States. But, while 
slaves changed hands like ordinary merchandise, it was 
an offence to harbour a Quaker, or attend a Quaker 
meeting. When the Baptists tried to enter their first 
meeting-house, they found the doors nailed up, and 
when they thereupon held a service in the open air, 
they were arrested and imprisoned. No one could be 
found to sell a plot of land for an episcopal church, 
while heresy might be punished, according to its 
" damnableness," by fine, banishment, or even by death. 
Such being the Boston of the men who built it for 
a refuge from ecclesiastical domination, let us glance 
again at the city at a time when the sons of the Puritans 
were making it a stronghold against the tyranny, not of 
English bishops, but of an English king and parliament. 



BOSTON. 303 

Old Boston, at the time of the war, was a town of 
irregular streets and narrow lanes, bearing names, either 
of commonplace character or of English associations. 
Thus there were Frog Lane, Flounder Lane, and Hog 
Alley, together with King Street, George Street, and 
Marlborough Street, all of which have long since been 
altered. The carriage-ways were pitched with large 
pebbles, and the footway was marked off from the road 
only by a gutter. The houses were still, for the most 
part, of wood, ugly in appearance, and, having their 
shingle roofs surmounted by railings, within which, 
on washing-days, the family shirts and petticoats 
flapped in the wind. The mean look of the houses was, 
however, somewhat relieved by a profuse and varied 
display of signs. These decorated the shops with such 
devices as the Heart and Crown, Three Nuns and a 
Comb, the Brazen Head, together with an endless suc- 
cession of golden balls, blue gloves, sugar loaves, sceptres, 
elephants. Red Indians, and gilded boots, but in no case 
did the sign bear any relation to the business carried on 
beneath it. It is a little remarkable that, almost alone 
among these sculptured advertisements, the Red Indian 
in America, simulating the Highlander who guards the 
British snuff-shop, survives, like him, to distinguish the 
tobacconist's trade. 

On the west side of the town, the streets were neater, 
and the houses of brick, with Corinthian pilasters up the 
front, and Corinthian columns supporting the porch. 



304 BOSTON. 

Each dwelling stood in its own garden, embov/ered with 
foliage, while long flights of sandstone steps gave 
access to the front door, which was frequently framed 
in roses and honeysuckles. The furniture was often 
imported from England, and the house-wife took a 
special pride in her china, cut-glass dishes and 
English silver plate. On the landings, were tall 
upright clocks, which chimed a tune every hour. In 
the living-rooms, great fireplaces, and shining brass 
andirons. On the walls, pictures by Copley or West 
The books were few and uninviting, according to 
modern ideas. The " Lives of the Martyrs," Young's 
" Night Thoughts," Rollin's " Ancient History," the 
" Pilgrim's Progress," and the Spectator, were all on 
the shelves, but no novels of Richardson, Fielding, or 
Smollett 

The master and mistress might be either austere or 
worldly people. In the former case, life was governed 
by cast-iron rules, which, harsh as they seem to us, at 
least generated force of character and fostered a high if 
narrow intelligence. Books that repel readers of the 
present day, found diligent and thoughtful students both 
in the bread-winner and housewife. The girl of the 
period was educated at home, until old enough to go to 
school, where she learnt, in addition to the three R's, a 
little French, and how to embroider, draw, and play 
upon the harpsichord. 

The frivolous, on the other hand, of whom there were 



BOSTON. 305 

many, entertained in the good old style, giving dinners 
after the English fashion, where, when the ladies had 
withdrawn, the punch-bowl and rare old Madeiras gave 
life to many a discussion upon politics and religion. 
The ladies spent their time in paying and receiving- 
visits, while, once a fortnight, they attended public 
assemblies in Concert Hall, where the minuet and contre- 
danse still held the floor. 

Worldlings such as these, however, excited the horror 
of the staid majority, even in the city ; while, in the 
country, the farmer lived a life of absolute simplicity 
and rigid pietism. He ploughed his land, sowed 
the seed broadcast, cut it when ripe with a scythe, and 
thrashed it with a flail — all with his own hands. His 
house was without paint, carpets, or decorations of any 
kind. He ate rye-bread, beans and pork, and his two 
suits, of corduroy and broadcloth, after lasting him a 
lifetime, descended to his heir. The week-days were 
given wholly to labour, and on Sunday, after the mid- 
day meal, the farmer sat in his wide chimney corner 
while his daughter, Kezia or Comfort, read him, let us 
hope, to sleep, with one of those terrible calvinistic 
sermons, characteristic of the time, whose only burden 
seems to be — 

" You can and you can't ; you will and you won't. 
You'll be damned if you do ; you'll be damned if you don't." 

Notwithstanding all which, the New England farmer 
like the citizen of the period, was by no means an un- 

X 



3o6 BOSTON. 

intelligent or unimportant person. His education, though 
not deep, was sound ; his interest in public afifairs in- 
tense, while the share which he took in the government 
of his township sharpened his political judgment, as his 
sense of proprietorship developed his patriotism. 

We may well imagine that such men as these, whether 
living in town or country, looked with no favourable eye 
on the soldiers of King George, whose presence in Boston 
overawed the colonists, already chafing against the 
hated Stamp Act, already echoing the cry of " No 
taxation without representation." And when the Stamp 
Act passed, Boston expressed its feelings in no half- 
liearted manner. The people hanged the new stamp 
collector in effigy upon their great elm, afterwards called 
" Liberty tree," and defying the chief justice, who ordered 
the sheriff to take the image down, burnt it before the 
officer's own door, and then wrecked the chief justice's 
house. Meanwhile, in the country, mounted men hunted 
the newly appointed stamp officers, and forced them to 
resign their posts. News like this went quickly to 
England, causing the wise Chatham to exclaim, " I rejoice 
that America has resisted," and bringing about, through 
his influence, the repeal of the Act within a year of its 
passage. 

But the troops remaining in Boston, soon got into 
hot water with the people, and their first brush was with 
the boys. The latter built snow-hills every winter on 
the common, and these the soldiers had several times 



BOSTOX. 307 

wantonly trampled down, so, after vainly appealing to 
the captain, a deputation of the boys waited upon General 
Gage, made formal complaint of their grievance, and 
declared they would bear it no longer. " What ! " said 
the general, " have your fathers taught you rebellion, 
and sent you here to exhibit it ? " " Nobody has 
sent us, sir," answered one of the boys. " We have 
never injured or insulted your soldiers, but they have 
destroyed our snow-hills, and broken the ice on our 
skating-ground. We complained, but they called us 
' young rebels,' and told us to help ourselves if we could." 
Happily, Gage was a good fellow, and took the 
boys' parts ; but it was not long before a much more 
serious quarrel arose between the troops and the towns- 
people. On March 5, 1 770, a party of soldiers, straying 
about the town with their guns in their hands, were 
taunted by, and returned the taunts of a crowd. Some 
boys threw snow-balls, and shouted, " Drive them to 
barracks ! " and the noise was increasing when the guard, 
commanded by Captain Preston, arrived on the scene. 
Taunts soon became threats, and threats had already 
ended in blows, when Preston ordered his men to fire ; 
and, on the smoke clearing away, eleven men were seen 
stretched upon the ground, four of them being stone 
dead. Captain Preston was tried for murder, but, shielded 
by the loyalty of men in high position, he was acquitted, 
notwithstanding which the " Boston massacre " formed 
the first step to\\'ards the Revolutionary War. 



.3oS BOSTON. 

Three years later, George III., in the words of Lord 
North, determined " to try the question with America," 
and, dropping a number of vexatious taxes, which, in 
spite of Pitt's earnest remonstrances, had been reimposed 
subsequently to the repeal of the Stamp Act, he stub- 
bornly insisted on retaining the tax upon tea. Some 
large shiploads of tea were accordingly sent from England 
to various colonial ports, and, among others, to Boston. 
Meanwhile, it must be remembered that people in the 
colonies were everywhere abstaining from the use of 
articles upon which taxes were laid, and, in this matter 
of tea, were trying all sorts of native herbs as a substitute 
for it. When the tea-ships arrived, therefore, the city 
set a guard over them as they lay at the wharf, while 
endeavouring to persuade Governor Hutchinson to send 
them peaceably back to London without unloading. This 
the governor refused to do, whereupon a body of fifty 
men, disguised as Indians, took possession of the vessels, 
and threw their cargo, consisting of three hundred and 
fifty chests of tea, into the harbour. Then they quietly 
dispersed, and so ended the famous " Boston tea-party," 
Avhich took place on December i6, 1773. 

If we could have entered Boston two years later, or 
in the spring of 1775, we should have found it full of 
English soldiers, the city protected by earthworks thrown 
across the " neck " of the peninsula, the wharves deserted 
by shipping, and only British men-of-war lying in the 
harbour. At the same time, the citizens of old Boston 



BOSTON. 309 

were meeting every night at clubs, where, from amidst 
clouds of tobacco smoke, and while the punch-bowl 
went round, one patriotic speaker after another encou- 
raged the people to resistance, and even incited them to 
war in defence of their liberties. 

At length war came. The patriots of Massachusetts 
colony had already organized themselves as a provincial 
congress. From the colonial militia they had selected 
a body of " minute-men," who were bound to assemble 
at a moment's notice. They had collected and stored, 
at Concord, arms and ammunition, whose whereabouts 
General Gage's spies could not discover, and to secure 
which from capture they organized a special watch, 
whose instructions were to hang out a lantern from the 
North Church if, at any time, a large force of troops 
should move out of Boston under cover of darkness. 

On the night of April 18, 1775, this light gleamed 
from the steeple, and immediately messengers went riding 
in all directions to apprise the patriot leaders that the 
regulars were coming out. Meantime, nearly a thousand 
British troops, embarking in boats at the foot of Boston 
Common, left the peninsula, and were already marching 
silently through what is now Cambridge, when, suddenly, 
the bells of the country churches began to ring, making 
it clear that the alarm had been given. The British general 
in command sent back for more troops, at the same time 
despatching Major Pitcairn, with two or three hundred 
men, to seize the bridge at Concord. But when, early 



jio BOSTON. 

next morning, he passed through Lexington, he found 
his further advance opposed by a small body of militia- 
men, under the command of Captain Parker. Upon 
them the British at once opened fire, the Americans 
replying, but without doing much mischief, and Pitcairn 
marched on towards Concord, leaving eighteen Ameri- 
cans killed or wounded on the field. 

The North Bridge at Concord was already defended 
by nearly five hundred patriots, when the British advance, 
which had now been joined by the main body of troops, 
attacked the position. The British were first to open 
fire, which the militia and minute-men returned with 
such effect that the regulars were soon in full retreat, a 
retreat which presently became a rout. For the whole 
country had now been aroused from sleep by the clang- 
ing of bells, and the farmers arriving, alone or in small 
parties, but without order or discipline, fell upon the 
broken troops, firing at them from behind trees and 
stone walls, until, at last, they fairly bolted. P"or sixteen 
miles, the British soldiers ran the gauntlet through a 
lane of desultory fire, and were only saved from total 
destruction by reinforcements, which marched out of 
Boston and received the remnant of tired fugitives 
within a hollow square. Thus opened the War of 
Independence, at the very gates of New England's 
capital, behind whose defences the shattered troops of 
Britain found a temporary shelter, whence, however, 
and within a year, they were to be for ever driven by 
the skilful operations of General Washington. 



BOSTON. 311 

Old Boston was, as wc have seen, a town of signs, 
and its trading quarters a labyrinth where — 

" Oft the peasant, with inquiring face. 
Bewildered, trudges on from place to place ; 
He dwells on every sign with stupid gaze, 
Enters the narrow alley's doubtful maze. 
Tries every winding court and street in vain, 
And doubles o'er his weary steps again." 

The sign of Josias Franklin, tallow-chandler, and father 
of Benjamin Franklin, was a blue ball, which hung 
suspended over a tiny shop at the corner of Hanover 
Street, where the future savant and statesman dipped 
candles for his father, until, tiring of this business, he 
entered his brother's printing-office in Queen Street. 
Hanover and Queen Streets ! How much the candle- 
maker, who left the one at twelve, to become his 
brother's type-setter in the other at fourteen years of 
age, was yet to do towards changing these names and 
his country's future ! Boston, however, can no longer 
honour the little house where the great Franklin was 
born, for it, like a hundred other landmarks of the 
past, has been sw^ept away by city improvements. 
But the blue ball, at least, remains, a sacred relic in 
the eyes of all New Englanders, carefully preserved by 
General Stone, of Boston, in memory of one of her 
greatest sons. 

The stories of his humour are endless, and no man 
ever undertook greater responsibilities with greater 
cheerfulness. Franklin could joke, whether putting his 



313 BOSTON. 

armour on or off, and, in the latter case, was perhaps 
never happier than in his famous toast at Versailles. 
After the war was over, he, with the English ambassador, 
was dining with the French minister Vergennes, when 
a toast from each was demanded. " I give you George 
the Third," said the Englishman, " who, like the sun in 
his meridian splendour, enlightens the whole world." 
" And I," said the Frenchman, " Louis the Sixteenth, 
who, like the moon, sheds his benignant rays over the 
universe." " I ask you to drink George Washington," 
ended Franklin, " who, like Joshua of old, commanded 
both sun and moon to stand still, and they obeyed 
him." 

But we must not leave the metropolis of New England 
without one glance at the Boston of to-day. It is a 
city of very irregular outline, the foster-child of rivers, 
creeks, bays and inlets, which have determined its wholly 
un-American features. Its deep and capacious harbour 
is lined with nearly two hundred whai^ves, and studded 
with as many as fifty picturesque islands. Its streets 
are well paved, clean and admirably cared for ; those of 
old Boston retaining the irregularity of the past, but 
now consisting of solid, if old-fashioned, warehouses, 
halls and markets. The newer quarters are laid out 
symmetrically, long streets of handsome shops and fine 
blocks of commercial offices giving upon excellent, and 
sometimes splendid residential districts. Among these 
rise numerous churches of considerable dignity and 



BOSTON. 313 

beauty, which more than make amends for the absence 
of pubHc buildings as important as those of Washington. 
The park-hke common, dominated by the State-house, 
with its high gilded dome, is set like an oasis in the very 
heart of the town, whose best streets are bordered 
with turf and trees, giving a charm to Boston such as 
no other American city possesses. Everywhere there 
reigns scrupulous cleanliness and perfect order ; well- 
dressed people throng the streets and crowd the remark- 
ably Vv-ell-appointed public vehicles, the whole scene 
suggesting to an English visitor a tiny but newly 
scrubbed London, brightened by pretty toilets, and 
blessed with the atmosphere of Italy. 

To reproduce the suburbs, take Sydenham, or, if 
procurable, some yet cleaner skirt of London ; shake its 
houses and gardens over a number of charming and 
rather abrupt hills which look down upon a city of 
wharves and warehouses indeed, but also upon a blue 
and land-locked harbour, dotted here and there with 
grotesque little islands. Institute a great external 
" spring-clean " of all these dwellings, and then frame 
the white results with greenery below and azure above. 
Such is the city and such the homes of Boston, where 
live three hundred and fifty thousand people, the pick 
of the English race. In its drawing-rooms, as in its 
counting-houses and streets, an Englishman feels that 
he is at home, although on the further side of the 
Atlantic. But he is conscious that the conditions of life 



314 BOSTOX. 

are more Inspiring, that opinion is freer from social 
fetters, and that the intellectual air, like that of heaven 
itself, is crisper in the capital of New than of Old 
England. 

And the truest lovers of that dear Old England are 
they who rejoice that the possibilities of their race 
are not to be exhausted in the little island which gave 
them birth. As the men who carried the lamp of 
English liberty to Plymouth Rock and Massachusetts 
Bay were of our best blood, so the best of their living 
English kin are they who love to see that light brighten, 
and who glory in its widening spread. Farewell ! New 
England, only less dear than Old England, whose son 
if I were not, then I would be yours. God speed your 
arduous work of moulding European labour upon the 
manly ideals of your fathers ; God quicken the conviction 
which you inherit from those fathers that upon the 
worth of industry, rests the welfare of States. 



CHAPTER XVIII. 



THE HUDSON RIVER. 



The work wc set ourselves to do is over ; we have seen 
the last of New England men and New England mills, 
and bidden " God-speed " to the transatlantic alchemist, 
leaving him busy at the task of transmutation, " making 
Americans " from European materials, in the alembic 
of common schools and free institutions. We have 
observed the present condition, noting its lights and 
shadows, and tried to forecast the future of labour in 
America ; nor have we shrunk from reasoning together 
concerning the fiscal dangers of industry in the States. 
Meanwhile the bright American summer has succeeded 
to the sudden spring, and now, with its glorious sunlight 
over us and glad greener}' around us, our faces are again 
turned homeward. 

Once more I am leaving New York, bound, this time, 
for Quebec, and thence by the Allan line of steamers to 
England, but with time enough on hand, before the 
Polynesian starts, to enjoy a leisurely sail up the Hudson 



3i6 THE HUDSON RIVER. 

River and the trip by Lakes George and Champlain to 
Montreal. Afterwards, I will beg the reader's further 
company while we glance, in passing, at the two chief 
Canadian cities, nor ask to say good-bye until the 
glorious St. Lawrence has floated us to the Atlantic 
Ocean. 

All the world knows that the city of New York lies 
at the mouth of the " Groot River," which the navi- 
gator Henry Hudson discovered when making his third 
voyage, on behalf of the Dutch East India Company, 
in search of a short cut to India. This long-desired 
route he, for a time indeed, thought he had found, as 
he sailed in the autumn of 1609 up the tidal reaches 
of the Hudson. But his admiration of the fine lands 
on both sides of the stream, " pleasant with g'rass and 
flowers and goodly trees," whence friendly Indians 
brought grapes, pumpkins, and furs to his ship, in 
canoes hollowed out of trees, was soon to end in bitter 
disappointment. After a hundred and fifty miles of 
hopeful navigation, the water shallowed under his keel, 
until, brought to a standstill by shoals at the spot where 
Albany now stands, the baffled explorer turned back a 
third time from seeking a westward road to the wealth 
of Ind. Once again only, was the daring Dutchman 
to attempt the realization of this dream of the seven- 
teenth century. But his next voyage was into the 
northern seas, where, in the bay that bears his name, 
his mutinous crew set himself and his son adrift, among 



THE HUDSON RIVER. 317 

floating ice, in a small ship's boat, wherein, ending life's 
voyage in company that he loved, the old viking drifted 
away to the haven where he would be. 

After his discoveries, Holland laid claim to all the 
land along the Groot River, calling the whole territory 
" New Netherlands," and presently establishing at the 
mouth of the stream the settlement of "New Amsterdam," 
which had grown into a considerable town before it 
fell into our hands and changed its name to New York 
in 1664. Meanwhile, the Dutch had built several trading 
posts at various points on the river, where they bought 
skins from Indian trappers, paying for these with beads, 
knives and hatchets. 

We have already seen how slowly the Dutch settlers 
on the Hudson, who were traders rather than farmers 
by inclination, spread eastward from the stream towards 
the New England States, and how the superior energy 
of the English colonists tended to confine the former to 
the river-banks. Those banks are, indeed, still Dutch in 
the names of the towns which line them, as these also 
arc Dutch in many of their manners and customs. If the 
" bowery," or country house, of the old Dutch trader has 
disappeared, and if he no longer lounges in its " stoop," 
or porch, on moonlit evenings, greeting passers-by 
with punctilious politeness, the names " bowery " and 
" stoop " have nevertheless become fused into the speech 
of the American people. Similarly, the Dutchman's 
festival of Santa Claus and his habit of giving- Easter 



v- 



318 THE HUDSON RIVER. 

eggs survive in existing national customs. The very 
" crullers " and " dough-nuts " which these lovers of good 
cookery brought with them from Europe, are American 
delicacies to-day, although the broad-skirted coats, with 
large silver buttons, the knee-breeches and eelskin 
queues of the men, the white muslin caps, gaily coloured 
petticoats, bright green stockings and high-heeled shoes 
of the women are gone. 

But we must not waste the day talking of old Dutch 
times on the Hudson. The whistle of our river steamer 
is blowing, we are seated well forward, for the sake of 
the view, we know that all the comforts of life are at 
our command on board this floating hotel, and, with 
these resources of civilization at hand to comfort us on 
the way, we are well content to lounge away a long 
summer day among some of the finest river scenery in 
the world. 

The Hudson is, altogether, rather more than three 
hundred miles in length, but is only navigable for half 
that distance, the last hundred and fifty miles of its 
course forming a tidal estuarj^, although presenting 
the appearance of a broad river. Leaving the wharf, 
the Vibbard became one of a motley crowd of craft, 
whose number and variety is a special feature and one 
of the great charms of the Hudson. Three-storied ferry- 
boats and snorting little tugs, graceful sloops and 
schooners, immense " tows " of barges, in charge of large 
paddlc-whccl steamers, yachts, fishing and pleasure boats 



THE HUDSON RIVER. 319 

of all descriptions, make a lively scene of the spacious 
bay into which the river widens opposite New York. 

This bay, after a few miles, becomes a majestic 
stream, whose opposite banks are, however, widely con- 
trasted in character. On the west, rises a sheer wall of 
basaltic rock, varying from three to five hundred feet 
in height, but nowhere more than a mile in width. 
About the base of this wall, lies a talus of its own debris 
scantily clothed with trees, while its summit is, here and 
there, crowned by a private residence, or a great hotel. 
The " Palisades," as they arc called, whose total length 
is not less than three hundred and fifty miles, extend 
for twenty miles along the right bank of the Hudson, 
and are only occasionally broken into detached pin- 
nacles or cleft by a rare cascade. They are one of the 
trap ridges, such as those we have already seen in the 
Connecticut valley, which everywhere intrude through 
the triassic sandstones of the Eastern States, and form 
ranges of rampart-like hills, having bold columnar faces 
and long sloping backs. While the western shore thus 
consists of a long and frowning cliff, the eastern bank 
of the river exhibits a succession of slopes, worn by the 
passage of glacier ice in azoic rocks, which sink in a 
thousand gentle curves to the water's edge, smiling with 
snug villages, grassy lawns, embowered villas and pretty 
cottages, the homes of wealth and taste. 

We have quite tired of the monotonous wall of the 
Palisades before this at length retires from the river- 



320 THE HUDSON RIVER. 

bank at a spot almost opposite Sunnyside, the home 
of Washington Irving. His cottage of many gables, 
scarcely seen for the dense shrubbery which surrounds 
it, was built by one of old " Silverleg's " counsellors, who, 
Dutchman-like, inscribed the motto " Lust und Rust " 
over doors which were afterwards to form the subject 
of one of Irving's most charming sketches. A few miles 
more bring us to " Sleepy Hollow, a little valley among 
high hills, which is one of the quietest places in the 
world," a retreat where one might happily " steal from 
the world and its distractions and dream away the 
remnant of a troubled life." 

" Here, once on a time, Ichabod Crane taught the 
Dutch urchins the three elementary R's and, at the same 
time, paid court to the fair Katrina, daughter of old 
Farmer van Tassel. Brom van Brunt, nicknamed Brom- 
Bones, loved the same maiden and resolved to drive the 
schoolmaster from the village. One dark night, Ichabod 
started home from Van Tassel's in very low spirits. 
The hour was dismal as himself Far below him, the 
Hudson spread its dusky waste of waters with, here and 
there, the tall mast of a sloop riding quietly at anchor 
under the land. Now a belief was extant in a spectre 
called the Horseman of Sleepy Hollow, supposed to be 
the spirit of a Hessian trooper whose head had been 
carried off by a cannon-ball. Near the old church, this 
horrid ghost made its appearance in pursuit of Ichabod, 
who bestrode an inflexible horse named Gunpowder. 



THE HUDSON RIVER. 321 

The terrified schoolmaster made all haste to reach a 
certain bridge, passing which he would be beyond the 
power of his pursuer. He spurred old Gunpowder for- 
ward, but, looking back, beheld the spectre close behind 
and in the very act of hurling its head at him. The 
crash came ; Ichabod rolled to the ground, and both 
spectre and Gunpowder rushed past him in a whirlwind. 
A shattered pumpkin was found in the road next day, 
and, not long afterwards, Brom-Bones led Katrina to 
the altar, but Ichabod was seen no more." 

Very near the quiet Hollow where Irving liked to 
think of dreaming away his life, is a quaint little seven- 
teenth-century Dutch church, the oldest religious edifice 
in the State of New York, and here, on a marble slab, 
may be read — 

WASHINGTON, 

SON OF 

William and Sarah Irving, 
Died November 2%, 1859. 

And that is the grave of the immortal Geoffry Crayon. 

Forty-three miles from New York, the steamer ap- 
proaches the Highlands, a continuation of the Blue Ridge 
mountains of Virginia, which, entering New York State 
from that of New Jersey, traverse its southern extremity, 
to join the Taconic Range, of which we saw so much in 
the earlier part of our journey. The Hudson meets the 
Blue Ridge almost at right angles, and has cut a passage 

Y 



322 THE HUDSON RIVER. 

through it, nearly eighteen miles long, steaming along 
whose deep but narrow channel, the traveller is presented 
with a series of mountain and river views unrivalled by 
those of any country in Europe. At the entrance of the 
Highlands, especially, stupendous precipices rise immedi- 
ately from the water, suggesting, but of course erroneously, 
that the stream has violently torn asunder the rocky 
barriers with which the hills once tried to restrain it. 

The contrast, presented to the mind, between the 
river, apparently bursting, in one case, through a mountain 
barrier several miles in breadth, and flowing quietly, in 
the other, past the basaltic wall of the Palisades, is very 
striking. But the reasons for the existence of that con- 
trast are not far to seek. The Blue Ridge, as the country 
north of it testifies, was once the southern boundary of 
a great lake, which filled the upper valley of the Hudson 
with a sheet of water at least a hundred and twenty 
miles long and forty miles wide. This inland sea was 
hemmed in by the Taconics on the east and by another 
Appalachian fold, of which the Catskills form a con- 
spicuous portion, on the west. Its outlet overflowed 
the crest of the Blue Ridge and poured southwards 
over it in a series of cascades, which, reaching the 
Hudson River of that period, were carried with its 
waters to the Atlantic Ocean. As time went on, the 
falls of the Blue Ridge, cutting their way backwards 
after the manner of cataracts, severed the range, and 
in this sense only can the Hudson be said to have forced 



THE HUDSON RIVER. 323 

its way through the eighteen miles of hill-countr\^ in 
question. The Palisades, on the other hand, having 
themselves a southerly trend, opposed no bar to the 
progress of the stream, for which, indeed, they form 
a natural embankment. 

Among the many high, forest-covered hills that 
environ the traveller passing through the Highlands, 
one of the highest is the Dunderberg, or Thunder 
Mountain, where, as Irving tells, and as every Dutch 
sailor used firmly to believe, dwells the Storm-Goblin 
of the Hudson. "The captains of river craft declare 
that they have heard him in stormy weather, in the 
midst of the turmoil, giving orders in Low Dutch for 
piping up a fresh gust of wind or rattling off another 
thunder-clap ; that sometimes, even he has been seen, 
surrounded by a crew of imps in broad breeches and 
short doublets, tumbling head over heels in the rack and 
mist, and that, at such times, the hurry-skurry of the 
storm was always greatest. Once, a sloop, passing by 
the Dunderberg, was overtaken by a thunder-gust that 
came scouring round the mountain and seemed to burst 
just over the vessel. All the crew were amazed when 
it was discovered that there was a little white sugar-loaf 
hat on the mast-head, known at once to be the hat of the 
Head of the Dunderberg. Nobody, however, dared climb 
to the mast-head and get rid of this terrible hat. The 
sloop laboured and rocked as if she would have rolled 
her mast overboard, and seemed in continual danger, 



324 THE HUDSON RIVER. 

either of upsetting or running ashore. Thus, she drove 
quite through the Highlands, until she passed a certain 
island where, it is said, the jurisdiction of the Dunder- 
berg potentate ceases. No sooner had she passed this 
bourne than the little hat sprang up into the air like 
a top, whirled all the clouds up into a vortex, and 
hurried them back to the summit of the Thunder 
Mountain, while the sloop sailed on upon an even keel. 
Nothing saved her from wreck but the fortunate circum- 
stance of having a horse-shoe nailed to her mast, a 
precaution against evil spirits adopted by all Dutch 
captains who sail this haunted river." 

West Point, the military academy of America, is 
situated among scenery of the most enchanting descrip- 
tion in the very midst of the Highlands. Love, rather 
than war, however, might well appear to be the subject of 
study at West Point, which is the theatre, during summer, 
of an endless round of harmless dissipations. Luncheon 
parties and picnics are the order of the day, and the 
woods are bright with pretty bonnets which do not hide 
prettier faces. Flirtation Walk, one of the most romantic 
river-side paths it is possible to imagine, is never without 
more than one pair, of ardent cadet and yielding maiden, 
whether sheltering among its foliage from the midday 
sun, or watching the moonlight lending silver to the 
stream and enchanted shadows to the hills. 

But West Point has known the rigours of war as 
well as the amenities of peace, and was, indeed, the 



THE HUDSON RIVER. 325 

scene of that dramatic incident of the Revolutionary- 
War, the treason of General Benedict Arnold. In the 
summer of 1780, this officer was in command of the 
Hudson River, with his head-quarters at West Point, 
then the key of communication between the east and 
south, and whose transfer into British hands would 
have cut the united colonies in two. This important 
post, Arnold, who had long been in communication 
with Sir Henry Clinton, the British commander, was 
about treasonably to surrender, and would have suc- 
ceeded in doing so but for a lucky accident. Three 
young American militia-men were one day roaming in 
the woods, over what was called the neutral ground, 
when they met a man, coming from West Point, with 
whom they stopped to parley. This was no other 
than Major Andre, Clinton's aide-de-camp, dressed in 
plain clothes, furnished with a false name and a pass 
from General Arnold, conveying a letter from the latter 
to the British head-quarters. Supposing that his inter- 
locutors were Loyalists, of whom there were many in 
the neighbourhood, Andr^ did not conceal the fact that 
he was a British officer, whereupon he was immediately 
seized and searched. Arnold's letter was found in his 
boot, and himself, at once, marched to the nearest 
military station, where, a little later, he was tried by 
court-martial and hanged as a spy. Arnold, warned 
by friendship, escaped to the British lines, and took a 
commission in the British army, but the traitor's name 



326 THE HUDSON RIVER. 

has been erased from the marble slab which records the 
names of the revolutionary generals at West Point. 

At Newburgh, sixty miles from New York, the 
steamer leaves the grandeurs of the Highlands behind 
her, but scarcely are these lost sight of before the Cat- 
skill Range comes into full view. These mountains rise 
abruptly from a plain extending some ten miles west- 
wards from the river-bank, and assume the form of an 
amphitheatre, whose walls, after scarcely completing a 
circle, turn, one northwards and one southwards, to form 
another of the many folds of the Alleghany chain. 
This is the very mountain hollow within whose 
precipitous sides the immortal Rip van Winkle fell 
into his long sleep, while, around and above it, rise 
the heights which still echo, for those who have 
ears to hear, the revels of Heinrich Hudson's crew, 
and the roll of their ghostly bowls. The Catskills 
come into, and are lost to view, again and again, as 
the steamer proceeds, their bastion-like profile tinted 
with heavenly blue, and their receding flanks ex- 
hibiting every dying tint of aerial azure until they are 
finally lost in the hazy distance. 

From the quaint old Dutch town of Poughkeepsie, 
where the views of the Catskills are finest, to Albany, 
the river-banks are tame, in regard to scenery, but 
interesting by reason of the many busy, prosperous 
towns which line them. Especially notable are the great 
ice-houses, which become very numerous on either bank, 



THE HUDSON RIVER. 327 

during the latter half of the trip ; that is, after the 
Hudson has become a fresh-water stream, or some 
sixty miles above New York. Between this point and 
Albany, there are nearly two hundred ice-houses, with 
a storage capacity of from five hundred to sixty 
thousand tons each, and it is from these that the 
city of New York, whose annual consumption of ice is 
upwards of seven hundred thousand tons per annum, is 
chiefly supplied. The use of ice in America is carried to 
an extent totally unknown in other countries, no matter 
how hot their summers, and the business of ice collecting 
is conducted on a correspondingly gigantic scale. The 
total annual ice-crop of the States is estimated at twenty 
million tons, of which the Hudson alone furnishes about 
three million tons, a quantity that could neither be 
gathered, stored, nor distributed without the assistance 
of special apparatus. 

Clean as well as clear ice is only to be had when 
the frozen surface of the stream is protected by a 
coating of snow. This, when ice-harvestiug begins, is 
removed by a machine, half scraper, half scoop, drawn 
by a horse. When an area, some five or six hundred 
feet square, has been thus cleared, it is lightly scored 
across and across, chequer fashion, by means of ice- 
ploughs, drawn, like the snow-scraper, by horses. 
Other ice-ploughs next deepen the scores into 
grooves, which penetrate the ice to two-thirds of its 
thickness, and leave the whole harvest-field ready to 



328 THE HUDSON RIVER. 

break up into square cakes measuring twenty-two inches 
across. While the ploughing is in progress, a channel is 
cut from the field to the ice-house, and the ice therein 
got rid of by pressing it, a piece at a time, below 
the surface of the water, when the current carries it 
beneath the main ice-sheet. A way being thus opened 
between the depot and the chequered ice-field, the 
latter is sawn into " floats," about twenty squares long 
and fourteen squares wide, which are afterwards broken 
up into long strips, by means of wedges applied to the 
grooves, and floated into the channel, where they are, 
finally, separated into cakes by men armed with chisel- 
bars. When the cakes, pushed forward by the floats 
behind them, arrive at the bank, they are received upon 
an inclined steam-elevator, consisting of an endless chain 
furnished with carriers, an arrangement very much like 
that which conveys the straw from a thrashing-machine 
to the top of the straw-rick. The lower end of the 
endless chain, with its carriers, dips under the surface of 
the water below, while above, it enters the top of the 
ice-house, into which each cake, as it comes up on a 
carrier, is discharged upon "slide-ways," or rails of 
gentle grade, adjustable to any desired spot within the 
depot. The elevators, in some of the largest establish- 
ments, are capable of raising fifty blocks, of a thousand 
pounds each, per minute, or fifteen hundred tons of ice 
in an hour. The ice-houses are immense wooden erec- 
tions, without doors or windows, about a hundred and 



THE HUDSON RIVER. 329 

fifty feet long- and forty feet wide, each accompanied 
by a smaller building, containing a steam-engine for 
driving the elevator. The cakes of ice are stored with 
a three-inch space all around them, for the prevention 
of undue waste in breaking them out, and after the house 
has been filled and closed, the frozen mass within loses 
little by melting. 

Summer having now come, the depots, as we 
passed, were busily discharging ice, by means of 
" slideways," into big brown barges which convey it to 
New York, These, when loaded with cakes, are col- 
lected into "tows," consisting of thirty or forty boats, 
arranged, four deep, in a line, and towed by very 
powerful paddle-wheel steamers. Among the varied 
craft which crowds the Hudson River, there is nothing 
so striking in appearance as these great ice-tows. Ever}'- 
barge is the home of a steersman, whose good wife 
flies a number of domestic flags upon the lines con- 
necting the two stumpy masts of the vessel. In the 
bow of each boat, stands a miniature windmill, whose 
canvas sails, turned by the breeze which the movement 
of towing creates, give motion to a crank, and this to 
a pump, keeping the barge free of such water as drains 
from the ice-cakes. A stranger water-procession it is 
impossible to meet. First, the high and labouring 
paddle-wheeler comes into view from out of the river 
mist, and, presently, separated from her by the 
length of the scarcely visible towing-lines, the 



330 THE HUDSON RIVER. 

mass of united barges steals noiselessly and gradu- 
ally into sight This has the appearance of a single 
strange and monstrous craft, bending flexibly around 
every curve of its course, fluttering with unknown 
bunting, and bewildering the eye with its array of 
whirling wind-sails. 

At length, we reached Albany, the point whence, 
less than three centuries ago, Henry Hudson turned 
back from his search for the road to India ; the capital 
of the great State of New York to-day. Being, now, 
a bird of passage, tarrying only for an hour in the 
city, there is, of course, little to be said of its ap- 
pearance and people. But that hour gave me time, 
and to spare, for the discovery that something other 
than the width of the Hudson River divides the 
Empire State from New England ; that, as I am much 
concerned to show, there are Americans and Americans. 
In spite of its splendid and still rising State House, one 
of the most ambitious public buildings in the world, and 
which has already absorbed nearly two and a half 
millions sterling, Albany proclaims itself to be without 
the public spirit and good municipal government of a 
New England city. Its streets are shamefully paved 
with rough boulders, its side-walks and gutters are the 
mere children of accident, and every public roadway 
is disgracefully out of repair. Its shops are less 
clean and respectable in appearance than those of 
any New England town, as its wayfarers are visibly 



THE HUDSON RIVER. 331 

of a lower grade. Nothing in the general appearance 
of the town attracts the European visitor, while it must 
sadly disappoint those whose ideals have been formed 
upon New England models. I was glad when the 
train swept me away from the dirty railway depot, 
towards the clear waters and wooded shores of Lake 
George. 



CHAPTER XIX. 

LAKES GEORGE AND CHAMPLAIN. 

In the same year that the Dutch navigator ascended the 
Hudson to its junction with the Mohawk River, Samuel 
Champlain, the famous French explorer, first made his 
way from Quebec to the lake which bears his name. 
From its southern extremity, he saw the smaller sheet of 
water now called Lake George, which, however, was not 
visited by a white man until three years later. Could 
Champlain and Hudson have pushed, the one forty 
miles farther south, the other forty miles farther north, 
France and Holland would have met at the head of 
Lake George, a hundred and fifty years before this spot 
saw the decisive battle which, after nearly seventy years 
of desultory warfare between England and France, pre- 
pared the way for the supremacy of the former in the 
New World. But Holland had been pushed aside by 
England almost a century before the forces of those two 
countries advanced, each with their savage allies, to meet 
in the death grip which was only relaxed on the heights 
of Abraham. 



LAKES GEORGE AND CHAMPLAIN. 333 

The terrible French and Indian wars of the seven- 
teenth and eighteenth centuries, whose cause has already 
been alluded to, and some of whose incidents related, 
came about in the following way. As the New England 
settlers increased in numbers, the native tribes steadily 
diminished, so that, in the last quarter of the seventeenth 
century, the whites largely outnumbered the native 
races. The latter were no match for the well-armed 
English, and, as one quarrel after another arose, the red- 
skins were pushed farther backwards, until their terri- 
tories became diminished, whether by treaties or seizures 
after war, to mere strips of land. Meanwhile, the French, 
who had long been settled in Canada, or " The New 
France," having explored the Great Lakes, traversed the 
Ohio and Mississippi rivers, together with Lakes George 
and Champlain, claimed all the vast internal region from 
the St. Lawrence to the Gulf They were quite as 
anxious as the Indians to confine the English to the 
strip of land bordering on the Atlantic, which alone 
their colonies occupied, and their missionaries and traders 
were very successful in cultivating friendly relations with 
the redskins. Hence, when the latter, beginning to find 
the pressure of the English intolerable, turned to France 
for assistance, the settlers of Canada were only too willing 
to give it. The wisest Indians, indeed, foresaw that the 
French and English would prove, each the edge of a pair 
of shears that would finally cut their possessions into 
ribbons, but the majority welcomed French assistance 
with eagerness. 



334 LAKES GEORGE AND CHAMPLAIN. 

This led to a series of wars, which, although termed 
Indian, and called by a variety of names, such as King 
William's War (1689), Queen Anne's War (1702), 
King George's War (1744), and, finally, the Old French 
and Indian War (1755-63), were really one long war, 
whose object was to determine whether the French or 
the English should be supreme in America. It was 
during the second of these contests that, as already 
related, the French and Indians attacked the town of 
Deerfield, and the dreadful incidents of this story 
might serve, names only being changed, to characterize 
all these terrible wars. 

It is easy to imagine how such tales, repeated by 
fathers to children at every colonial fireside, inflamed the 
hatred with which the white man regarded the redskin, 
and how this hatred became extended to the Canadian 
French, who aided the Indians in their attacks. So great 
was the interruption which these savage raids caused to 
the ordinary pursuits of life, that the colonists were 
always ready to back the government in sending expe- 
ditions against the French in Canada, so as to keep them 
busy defending themselves. Thus, in 1745, the Massa- 
chusetts colony fitted out an expedition, in which four 
thousand men took part, leaving their wives and children 
to plant the fields in their absence. Their object was 
to attack the French fortress of Louisburg, on Cape 
Breton, a position whose strength had gained for it the 
name of the " Gibraltar of America." Spite of its daring 



LAKES GEORGE AND CHAUfPLAIN. 335 

character, the enterprise was completely successful, and, 
after a siege of fifty days, Louisburg was lost to 
France. 

It happened, very fortunately for the colonists, that, 
while the Indians of the north-west were all allies of 
the French, certain powerful tribes, who lived west of the 
Hudson River, had long been their friends and hostile 
to their Canadian rivals. These Iroquois, as the French, 
or Maquas, as the Dutch called them, were really a con- 
federacy of five nations, the Mohawks, Oneidas, Ononda- 
gas, Cayugas and Senecas who, being afterwards joined by 
the Tuscaroras, came to be known as the " Six Nations." 
In 1754, the governor of the colonies, acting under 
the instructions of the English Government, summoned 
delegates from all these tribes to Albany, where a treaty 
was made with them, having for its object mutual defence 
against the French. Benjamin Franklin took advantage 
of this Congress to propose a plan of union to the colonies 
themselves, pointing out that the French, being under 
one government, while the colonies were thirteen in 
number, were much more powerful than they on that 
account. But the men whom he addressed were not yet 
ripe for union, although quite ready to combine for the 
purpose of fighting the French. War was accordingly 
declared, and the " Old French and Indian " campaign 
opened in 1/55, to be renewed with every succeeding 
year until the French had been driven from the Ohio, 
by Washington; from Lakes George and Champlain^ 



336 LAKES GEORGE AND CHAMPLAIN. 

by Generals Johnson and Lyman, and, lastly, from 
Quebec, by Wolfe, with the loss of which fortress 
passed away, for ever, the last hope of France for the 
supremacy of the New World. 

From its discovery by Champlain, down to the be- 
ginning of this war, or for a period of rather more than 
a hundred years, the whole region extending from the 
St. Lawrence to the Hudson was practically left in 
the undisturbed possession of the red-man. The two 
lakes, stretching north and south, formed a pathway 
through the wilderness for the canoes of tribes who were 
constantly at war with each other and whose destructive 
raids, sparing nothing in their course, drove away all 
who were inclined to occupy the country. Lake 
George, indeed, had never been visited by a white 
man until 1642, and was then only seen by Father 
Jaques, a Jesuit priest, and two other Frenchmen, all 
being prisoners in the hands of a party of Iroquois, 
returning to their home on the Mohawk after an attack 
upon their northern foes. Four years afterwards, being 
then free. Father Jaques returned to the lake, accom- 
panied by Bourdon, the engineer in chief to the governor 
of Quebec, and six friendly Indians. They took posses- 
sion of the, as yet, unexplored sheet of water on behalf 
of France, calling it Le Lac du Saint Sacrament, a name 
which it bore for rather more than a century, or until 
after the battle of Lake George in 1755, when the vic- 
torious General Johnson changed its name to that of the 



LAKES GEORGE AND CHAMPLALW 337 

reigning British king. But before this, in 173 1, while 
the tribes were temporarily at peace, the French had 
advanced to Crown Point, near the southern extremity 
of Lake Champlain, and built a fort, which they called 
PVederic. This was an encroachment on the terri- 
tory of the Five Nations, who claimed all the country 
lying along the lakes, country of which Champlain's 
discovery could not, in their opinion, dispossess 
them. 

Although not yet the formal allies of Great Britain, 
these tribes acknowledged the sovereignty and considered 
themselves under the protection of the King of England, 
so that the colonists made a strong protest against this 
act of the French but took no farther steps, at that 
time, to enforce the rights of their Indian friends. 
In 1755, however, the English, as we have seen, felt 
that something must be done to break through the 
barrier which France was always strengthening against 
their westward expansion. War was accordingly declared, 
and the opening scenes of the campaign decided upon 
at Albany took place on Lake George, about whose 
natural features, something must be said before we 
follow the flag of England to its first victory in this 
momentous struggle. 

It is but a short journey from Albany to the head 
of Lake George, the railway following the upper reaches 
of the Hudson as far as Glen's Falls, where the river 
makes a sharp westward turn and soon after becomes a 



338 . LAKES GEORGE AND CHAMPLAIN. 

mountain stream, whose sources must be sought in the 
Adirondack wilderness. Glen's Falls is full of great saw- 
mills, and the centre of an immense trade in timber, of 
which enough is cut here annually to girdle the earth with 
deal boards. Lumbering parties ply the axe, during the 
winter months, on all the streams which are tributary 
to the Hudson above this point, piling vast numbers of 
logs on their banks for the freshets of the following 
spring to carry to the " Big Boom " which bars the main 
stream at Glen's Falls. Here, the river is sometimes quite 
full of logs for a distance of four or five miles behind the 
boom, and presents an extraordinary appearance to un- 
accustomed eyes. 

Lake George is nine miles north of Glen's Falls, 
situated at the south-western margin of the Adirondack 
wilderness, and lying upon the watershed of the country 
separating the Hudson and St. Lawrence. It is thirty- 
four miles long and varies from one to four miles in width, 
while it becomes very narrow and river-like in appearance 
just before emptying itself into Lake Champlain, which is 
some three hundred and fifty feet below its level. Its 
water is perfectly pure and pellucid, of a bright blue 
colour, and sixty fathoms deep in the deepest parts of 
the lake. It is closely hemmed in by mountains which 
are densely clothed with forest, and rise, for the most 
part, abruptly from the water to heights of one thousand 
five hundred or two thousand feet. The lake contains 
as many islands as there arc days in the year, so at least 



LAKES GEORGE AND CHAMPLAIN. 339 

says the popular voice, and these vary in size from mere 
rocks to half a mile in length. Some are bare, while others 
are covered with foliage, but all of them are conspicuously 
ice-ground, the smaller islands looking just like whales' 
backs appearing above the surface of the water. Wher- 
ever the banks rise with sufficiently gentle slopes from 
the water, as well as upon many of the larger islands, 
the summer residences of wealth and refinement give 
a most agreeable air to a prospect which, without 
these, would be beautiful, indeed, but entirely primitive 
in its character. Only the head of the lake offers any 
cultivable soil to settlers ; its mountain flanks being 
without those terraces of drift soils which line the sides 
of eveiy river valley in New England, The forest, ac- 
cordingly, feeds only upon such scanty debris as the 
slow decomposition of gneiss and schist affords, and 
roots are seen penetrating into crevices and clinging 
around rocks which are, apparently, incapable of nourish- 
ing anything but lichens and mosses. Hence, there 
are no cleared settlements on Lake George whose 
shores, but for the summer homes in question, would be as 
complete a wilderness to-day as when they were trodden 
only by the foot of the redskin. 

Around the head of the lake, are a number of 
excellent hotels, which are crowded by holiday-visitors 
during the summer heats. The largest of these, named 
Fort William Henry, after the little stronghold, of 
which more hereafter, is capable of sleeping six hundred 



340 LAKES GEORGE AND CHAMPLAIX. 

guests, and its broad balcony, looking right down the 
narrow, mountain-girt stream, affords one of the best 
possible views o£ a scene that reminds the English 
tourist of Loch Katrine. Immediately behind the hotel 
stands Mount Prospect, whose summit, eighteen hundred 
feet above the lake, is easily reached by following a 
waggon-road leading to a small summer resort, perched 
at the summit for the accommodation of those who 
desire to spend their vacation in keen and bracing air. 

Thence, the view, if it commands a wilderness, is 
extensive and impressive. Southwards, the Hudson 
River winds in grand bends through a flat, drift- 
covered country, the old bed of that great lake alread}' 
referred to as having at some former period, occupied 
the valley of the upper Hudson. One cither side of this 
ancient lake-bottom, rise the ranges that have alread}- 
been described as forming its lateral boundaries, which, 
together with the flat country they enclose, recede south- 
ward until they are lost to sight in the hazy distance. 
Here and there, a bend of the Hudson introduces a 
shining line into the otherwise monotonous landscape, 
while the " Big Boom " of Glen's Falls is plainly to be 
made out by the curving mass of logs which obscures 
the glitter of the stream at this point. Looking west, the 
eye roams over the Adirondacks, a confused tumble of 
high, forest-clad mountains, and a region which, although 
within the confines of New York State, remains, as yet, 
completely untouched by civilization, unless the sports- 



LAKES GEORGE AND CHAMPLAIN. 34^ 

man, seeking his game there, among an endless succession 
of lakes, may be considered as its forerunner. Northward, 
the narrow lake threads dark, embowered hills with a 
line of silver, which carries the eye onwards to a cross 
range of far-distant mountains, bounding the southern 
shores of the St. Lawrence with a serrated wall of 
heavenly blue. Eastward, the lake, with the hotels and 
houses circling its beach-fringed head, lies at the spec- 
tator's feet, while, over the feathered crest of its farther 
shore, peep the hazy outlines of the Green Mountain 
Range. 

The path to the summit of Mount Prospect affords a 
pleasant glimpse into the inner life of those dense woods 
of spruce and maple, birch and chestnut, which have 
succeeded to the primeval forests of pine that covered 
all Eastern America before man made his appearance 
on the scene with fire and axe. The day was sunny, 
and the air of the open waggon-road seemed, at times, 
alive with butterflies, moths and other insects, some of 
which latter, indeed, could have been advantageously 
spared. The beautiful " swallowtail " {Machaoii) was 
very abundant, rising by hundreds at my approach, from 
any little patch of moisture on the road, and seeming, 
so great were their numbers, to come out of the earth 
itself. With them were associated a few " Camberwell 
Beauties," while, fluttering over the low banks on both 
sides of the way, were thousands of a beautiful black- 
and-white moth, whose name I do not know. 



342- LAKES GEORGE AND CHAMPLAIN. 

The shrubby undergrowth among the trees was gay 
wlth pink cokimbine {Aquilegia), yellow potentillas, and 
the white, star-like blooms of the " bunch-berry," a species 
of rttbns that abounds in every clearing. Scarcely less 
conspicuous was the liliaceous Siniliciua, whose pretty 
blooms are like a tiny " meadow-sweet." Every patch of 
sandy soil was crowded with the King Fern {psnuDida 
regalis), while the no less beautiful Osimtnda interrupta 
was almost equally plentiful. The woods themselves 
were lighted up here and there by the little Star of 
Bethlehem {Trientalis (mcjnosHin),t\\Q bell-wort {Uviilaria 
scssilifolid) and a " Lord and Lady," quite different from 
ours, called Ar?iin tripJiylluvi ; while more than one of 
the lovely orchids we name Lady's Slipper {Cypripedutm) 
occurred in the course of the walk. The bed-rock of 
the mountain, here of gneiss, there of a garnet-bearing 
schist, had some difficulty in showing itself through a 
covering of drift, which was closely stuffed Avith travelled 
boulders of all sizes. 

Passing, in the midst of this primitive wilderness, 
a solitary log-house, I saw a strapping young farmer, 
manfully battling, plough in hand, for the redemp- 
tion of a tiny patch of land from rocks and forest. 
The task, to my uneducated eye, seemed entirely 
superhuman, and the man a very hero. Such soil as 
he had already turned was black and sour-looking, 
encumbered with great stones, and choked with the 
roots of trees. The rough surface looked still more 



LAKES GEORGE AND CHAMPLAIN. 343 

uninviting from the charred trunks which lay, here and 
there, upon it, and Nature herself seemed to forbid the 
idea that this could ever become a seed-bed. Such 
was the ground which, hopeless as the attempt seems to 
a layman, the farmers of New England have converted 
from a wilderness into wheat-fields. 

Smile as the forest may, bordering a road cleared 
through its recesses, it puts on another aspect as soon 
as that road is left. Returning from Mount Prospect, 
I ventured to follow what was described to me as a 
conspicuous trail, leading directly through the woods 
to Fort William Henry, and saving more than half the 
distance I had traversed in the ascent. Here, after a 
few minutes, injudiciously hunting the Lady's Slipper, 
I becam.e hopelessly lost, and had I not taken a bearing 
with a pocket compass before starting, might easily 
have wandered for hours in the wrong direction, to 
find myself turned aside again and again by crags, in 
trying to get to the bottom of the hill. Fortunately, 
the magnet set me once more in the path within 
half an hour, a sufficient experience of forest walking 
for any one wishing to appear in a costume more 
becoming than rags at the evening table d'hote. Such, 
however, matching the character of the soil he tilled, 
was the country hemming in the early settler on 
every side, and such too was the ground over which 
we left the soldiers of civilization and savagery march- 
ing in company to begin the encounter which was to 



344 LAKES GEORGE AND CHAMP LA IN. 

end, a few years later, in the complete discomfiture of 
France. 

The " something " which the English, assembled at 
the Albany conference, felt called upon to do, they set 
about accomplishing as follows. In the summer of 1755, 
they built a fort a few miles south of Lake George, then 
called the Lac du Saint Sacrament, upon the spot already 
mentioned as that where the Hudson bends suddenly 
westward, and very near Glen's Falls. From this rude 
stronghold, then called Fort Lyman, after the officer who 
had raised it, but afterwards known as Fort Edward, 
General Johnson, the commander of the provincial 
troops, advanced with an army to the head of Lake 
George. His plan was to go down the lake with half 
his force, which included a number of Indians led by a 
famous old Mohawk chief called Hendrick, to entrench 
himself at Ticonderoga, the narrow strip of land between 
Lakes George and Champlain, to wait there until the 
rest of the army could be brought down to join him, 
and then to attack Fort Frederic, the position which, 
as we have already seen, had been taken up by the 
French on Champlain. 

But while he was preparing to move, Vandreuil, the 
Governor-General of Canada, hearing that a consider- 
able body of men was assembling at the head of Lake 
George, and fearing that a successful attack upon 
Frederic might be followed by the invasion of Canada, 
sent the Baron de Dieskau, with a mixed force of French 



LAKES GEORGE AND CHAMPLAIN. 345 

soldiers, Canadians and Indians, to meet him. This 
officer waited at Fort Frederic some time for the arrival 
of the English, but finding no prospect of their approach, 
determined to go and seek them. Accordingly, cm- 
barking with two thousand men, he sailed to the 
southern extremity of Lake Champlain, which, on the 
farther side of the range forming the eastern shore of 
Lake George, overlaps nearly the whole length of the 
latter lake. 

Upon his arrival there, an English prisoner, taken 
hy his scouts, informed him that Fort Lyman was 
unfinished and without cannon, and that Johnson 
was lying at the head of the lake entrenched, and also 
Avithout artillery. Being within striking distance of 
cither point, he at once determined to attack the fort, 
whose capture would cut Johnson off from his supplies 
and compel him either to return, only to find Dieskau 
in a strong entrenched position, or to surrender at dis- 
cretion. But the French commander's troops, consisting 
largely of Canadians and Indians, were totally unable to 
comprehend even such simple tactics as these, and were, 
besides, suspicious that the fort was, after all, defended 
by cannon, of which both Canadians and Indians had 
a peculiar dread. In vain did Dieskau attempt to over- 
come their reluctance to be led against Fort Lyman, so, 
having no alternative but to attack Johnson or retreat, 
he chose the former course, and marched his army 
towards the head of Lake George. 



346 LAKES GEORGE AND CHAMPLAIX. 

Apprised by his scouts of the presence of the French 
in force, Johnson warned Colonel Blanchard, who was 
in charge of Fort Edward, by messengers, of his danger, 
and, after a council of war, determined to attack 
Dieskau's advancing army. Accordingly, he detached 
a party, consisting of twelve hundred men, commanded 
by the Colonel Williams whom we know as the 
founder of Williams College, and comprising a number 
of Indians under the leadership of Old Hendrick. 
Scarcely had they started than Johnson began to 
entrench himself on the spot where the hotel, called Fort 
William Henry after the English work, is now situated. 
Meanwhile, Dieskau prepared to receive Williams by 
extending his troops in the form of a crescent moon, 
whose horns were hidden from sight by the thick forest 
which covered all the country. Into the very hollow 
of this half-moon did Williams march his whole com- 
pany, only to find himself exposed to a musketry fire 
which galled his front and both his flanks at the same 
moment. The English fell in heaps, Williams and 
Hendrick being among the first to drop, and, but for 
the skill with which Colonel Whiting, succeeding to the 
command, organized and carried out the retreat, the 
whole party would have perished. He, however, fell 
back in fair order upon Johnson's supports and, the 
latter having in the mean time constructed a tolerable 
shelter of logs and sand, this received the broken English 
before they had become demoralized. 



LAKES GEORGE AND CHAMPLAIN. 347 

Dicskau, however, was not slow to follow up his 
advantage and, after collecting his widely spread wings, 
marched to the attack of Johnson's now entrenched 
position. But the fortune of war had already changed 
sides. The English retreat was orderly, and the men, as 
they tumbled in over Johnson's breastwork, were easily 
rallied behind it. Dieskau himself, after opening fire at 
a distance which rendered musket-balls harmless, halted 
his troops for some time, while he threw his Indians out 
into the forest with a view of flanking the entrenchment 
on cither side. This delay gave the fugitives time to 
recover themselves, while the French general's movement, 
being discovered, was easily defeated by a few discharges 
of grape showered among the flankers, who, being Indians 
and dreading artillery, at once fled. 

The frontal attack, although prolonged for five hours, 
proved a failure, and at four o'clock in the afternoon, 
English and Indians together leaped over the breastwork 
and charged the enemy. They fled and were vigorously 
pursued for a short distance, but Johnson, who was 
indeed wounded, showed no energy in following up a 
victory which had really been won by General Lyman, 
on whom the command had devolved very early in the 
day. Dieskau, an able and gallant soldier, was also 
wounded, and fell into the hands of the English, while, 
of the two thousand men whom he led to the attack, 
it is said that scarcely more than a thousand escaped 
wounds or death. These, on their retreat, were met by 



3|8 LAKES GEORGE AND CHAMPLAIK. 

a small party of colonial soldiers, about two miles from 
the battle-field, and defeated with the loss of all their 
baggage and artillery. Thus ended the battle of Lake 
George, an engagement, small in the number of the 
forces employed, but great in its effect upon the feeling 
of the country, which, for the first time, began to believe 
that the tide had turned, and that the power of France 
in North America was about to ebb. 

Two years later, indeed, the great Montcalm him- 
self attacked and, after a siege of six days, succeeded 
in wresting Fort William Henry from the English, who, 
though vastly outnumbered, terminated a gallant defence 
by an honourable capitulation. But the French general, 
to his eternal disgrace, took no proper care that the 
terms of this surrender should be observed. His savage 
allies were permitted to butcher the sick and wounded 
as they were passing out of the fort, while the fort itself 
was burnt and many of its brave defenders thrown alive 
into the flames. An escort of only three hundred men 
was provided to guard the prisoners of war, who were 
accordingly slain on the march to Quebec, men, women 
and children, to the number of fifteen hundred, by the 
Indians, who swarmed in the woods bordering their route. 
Eager to revenge this massacre, the English, in 1758, 
despatched Abercrombie, with fifteen thousand troops, 
for the purpose of driving the French from Ticonderoga 
and Fort Frederic ; but he failed utterly and ingloriously 
of his object from want of military skill. Finally, it 



LAKES GEORGE AND CHAMPLAIX. 349 

was left for Amherst to reduce both these places in the 
following year, and thus to break, for ever, the hold of 
France on the lakes. 

It is difficult to imagine any two contiguous sheets 
of water more unlike than Lakes George and Champlain. 
The latter extends, northward from its fellow, to St. 
John in Canada, a distance of two hundred miles. Its 
least breadth is half a mile, and its greatest eighteen 
miles. Its upper end is narrow and shallow, containing 
clay-discoloured water, which, however, becomes suddenly 
deep and clear at Crown Point, where the banks recede 
from each other some four or five miles. Thence, north- 
wards, its depth is considerable, and its average width is 
from ten to twelve miles. 

While the mountains hemming in Lake George rise, 
as we have seen, abruptly from its waters and are entirely 
free from those terraced deposits of drift soils which have 
so frequently challenged our attention, the flanks of 
Champlain are of an entirely different character. These 
consist of level terraces of clay and alluvium, which 
extend for many miles back from the margin of the lake 
and are covered with cropping of various kinds. Their 
widely receding flats have already become partially lost 
to sight in the haze of distance before there rise from 
them, on the east, the Green Mountain range, here 
displaying its loftiest summits, and on the west, the high 
and tumbled masses of the Adirondacks, the beauties 
of both range and wilderness being half hidden, half 



350 LAKES GEORGE AXD CHAMPLAIN. 

enhanced by the gauzy veils of azure which they 
wear. 

The Champlain of to-day is, quite evidently, only a 
meagre remnant of a sheet of water, formerly vast as an 
inland sea, and indeed, there is evidence to show that it 
was once an arm of the Atlantic itself. Marine shells are 
found abundantly in its clays, which have also yielded 
the remains of whales, sufficiently proving that at some 
former time, the whole valley of the St. Lawrence, 
together with the Champlain basin, was an inland exten- 
sion of the ocean ; an American Mediterranean. Lake 
George, standing three hundred and fifty feet above the 
level of this estuary, was never overflowed, and hence 
the absence from it of any such deposits as the 
Champlain clays, and the difference in the appearance 
of the two sheets of water. 

It is time to ask, more particularly than we have yet 
done, what was the origin of those terraces of alluvium 
of which, sometimes one, sometimes many successively, 
rise upon the flanks of almost every lake or stream in 
northern North America ? ]^ut the answer to this 
question is too long to be included in an already over- 
long chapter, while the problem itself can best be dis- 
cussed in presence of the splendid illustrations fur- 
nished by Canada to the wonderful story of the '' Great 
Ice Age," of which the phenomena of the " Champlain 
period " formed the closing incidents. 



CHAPTER XX. 

CANADA, PRESENT AND PAST. 

Montreal is reached from Lake Champlain after a 
tame railway ride across the old estuarine flats of the 
St. Lawrence ; the one and only sensation of this short 
trip consisting in the traveller's first view of the 
grand river and of the long tubular bridge which spans 
it. The Canadian cities will not detain us long, for 
wc are flying homewards now, and it is only from the 
decks of the river- and ocean-steamers which will carry 
us, the one from Montreal to Quebec, the other from 
Quebec down the St. Lawrence into the Atlantic, shall 
we have an opportunity of studying a feature or two 
of Canada present and past. But, even so, there is 
something to be seen and said of the strange 
physical events which prepared alike this country and 
New England for man's use and occupation. 

Montreal is almost as full of churches as a continental 
town, almost as catholic in its faith, and almost as un- 
English in its language. The traveller is roused from 



353 CANADA, PAST AND PRESENT. . 

sleep by the clang of church-bells and, once in the street, 
finds them full of French faces and re-echoing the 
French tongue. The general appearance of the city is 
neither American, French, nor English, but a curious 
mixture of all three. The more important business 
quarter contains warehouses and offices like those of 
New York or Chicago, but the wharves and qua}-s of 
the St. Lawrence are faced by houses such as might 
border the Seine, while markets, which are entirely 
French in their character, cling, as they do on the 
Continent, to the walls of churches and public buildings. 
The residential streets and suburbs, on the other hand, 
are thoroughly English in style, their detached dwellings, 
trim lawns, bedded gardens, and neat fences recalling 
memories of home to every British tourist. The 
numerous churches, although not without some archi- 
tectural pretensions, are none of them beautiful ; their 
stained glass is poor, and their altar-shrines tinsel. Never- 
theless there is everywhere evidence that the Catholic 
Church is rich and powerful in Montreal, and that the 
French-Canadians of the city are her good and liberal 
sons. 

Notre Dame, the cathedral, has a fine tower, whence 
a capital view of the city offers itself to all who have 
wind and limb for the ascent. I knew that I was no 
longer in the States when, with my foot upon the 
first step, I heard, " II faudra payer ici, s'il vous plait, 
monsieur." And the words stuck by me when, from the 



CANADA, PRESENT AND PAST. 353 

top, my delighted eyes took in the almost sea-like 
sweep of the great river, while my mind asked the 
questions— Why are there less than a dozen ships lying 
at these ample wharves ? Why arc there only one or two 
grain-elevators here, while there are scores at Buffalo, both 
cities tapping with almost equal advantages the wheat- 
fields of the north-west ? Why are there so few factory 
chimneys and so many church-spires ? " II faudra payer 
ici, s'il vous plait, monsieur." It was the only answer 
that suggested itself, but the half-mendicant phrase, 
seemed to indicate a gap, wider than the St. Lawrence 
itself, between the commercial instincts of French and 
Americans. 

Every visitor to Montreal must shoot the Lachine 
Rapids, situated some nine miles above the city, and it 
is easy to do so by taking the afternoon train to Lachine, 
and there embarking in the steamer which plies between 
Montreal and Ottawa. A few minutes afterwards, the 
Prince of Wales enters the rapids which, in the first 
instance, only indicate that they are rapids by the 
smooth, oily-looking swirls covering the surface of the 
stream. Presently, however, a line of broken water is 
seen ahead, extending right across the river ; the swirls 
become hurrying liquid masses, and, glancing at the 
wheel, we see that its spokes are grasped by four pairs 
of strong hands, while as many wide-open eyes are in- 
tently fixed on the line of breakers in front of the 
vessel. She, quite suddenly, and, as it seems, without 

2 A 



354 CANADA, PRESENT AND PAST. 

effort on the steersmen's part, finds herself shooting 
through a veritable trough, with an immense depth 
of water under her keel, but closely hemmed in 
upon either side by great, shelf-like rocks, which hardly 
rise to the surface of the racing water. Scarcely has 
the passenger appreciated the skill which brought his 
ship so deftly into the very middle of this passage, 
through which, narrow as it is, the bulk of the St. 
Lawrence seems to be rushing ; scarcely has he realized 
that this is the only notch in the ledge, over which 
the river here throws itself, wide enough to admit 
the steamer, than the latter plunges headlong into a 
confused sea of angry waves, which appear to advance 
upon her, roaring and threatening her destruction. But 
they only appear to advance, really breaking always 
in the same spot, and, through all the turmoil, the 
Prince of Wales, giving half a dozen moderate rolls, 
easily pushes her way into still swift, but smooth waters, 
which carry her quickly to the wharf at Montreal. 

Quebec is one hundred and eighty miles from i\Ion- 
treal, and the trip is much more pleasantly made by way 
of the St. Lawrence than by rail. The steamers, indeed, 
only travel by night, but they leave the wharf before 
the summer daylight has quite faded, and, if the sky 
be clear, the deck is sure to prove a pleasant place to 
lounge for an hour or two before turning in. Embarking 
at Montreal, the evening proved absolutely perfect, with- 
out a cloud in the heavens, or a breath of wind in the 



CANADA, PRESENT AND PAST. 355 

air. The river-banks, which do but channel here the 
wide estuarinc flats of a past time, are low and un- 
interesting, so that little w^as lost, so far as the scenery 
of the shore is concerned, as the sun withdrew his 
light. But when he was gone, the colouring of both 
the river and sky became almost indescribably beautiful. 
The heavens, for a great distance around the zenith, 
appeared of the darkest violet tinge, which gradually 
paled to a cold steely grey on the horizon, save where 
this was painted in the w^est with gold and saffron, 
between whose softly gradated tints it w^as impossible 
anywhere to draw a distinguishing line. The surface 
of the river was glassy smooth, except for certain 
slowly moving, rippled patches, where the shining water, 
touched by the finger-tips of wandering zephyrs, 
trembled no less gently than a maiden at the first soft 
kiss of her lover. Such smooth and gentle undulations 
as radiated, in widely separated lines, from the moving 
steamer towards the banks on either side, were brought 
into view only by the magic of colour. The slopes 
of their near flanks reflected the saffron and gold of 
the west, while beautifully blended violets and greys 
gleamed from the farther sides of their crests. Mean- 
while, the ship's wake, overshadowed by the dense smoke 
issuing from the funnels, looked almost awful in its 
garment of gloomy purples. Presently, as the yellow in 
the west faded, the northern horizon became lighted with 
a pale aurora, changing the tints of the water-ridges to 



356 CANADA, PRESENT AND PAST. 

steel-grey on one side, and pearly white on the other, 
while the stars, brightening in the violet sky, shot 
wavering arrows of light across the heaving mirror of 
the stream. 

Quebec, like Montreal, is a French town, "but more 
so." It is built on a tongue of elevated land which, 
forming the left bank of the St. Lawrence for several 
miles, completely dominates the river at this point. 
The loftiest part of the headland, three hundred and 
thirty feet above the sea, is crowned with the fortifica- 
tions of the citadel. These occupy about forty acres, 
and are considered to make the " Gibraltar of America" 
quite impregnable. Just below the citadel and almost 
surrounding it, is the upper town, itself enclosed with 
walls ; and below these, built on a margin of flat land 
which environs the rocky promontory, is the lower town. 
This is devoted to business, and consists of narrow, 
winding streets, crowded with shops and offices, for the 
most part bearing French names, and by no means 
imposing in appearance. The upper town contains 
many buildings belonging to great religious societies, 
while the remaining surface, where not occupied by 
fortifications, is covered with quaint old French houses, 
generally many stories high, and roofed, like the churches 
and public buildings of Lower Canada, with shining tin. 
" Dufiferin Parade," the promenade of the upper town, is 
two hundred feet above the level of the stream, and 
thence the banks of the St. Lawrence are seen to be 



CANADA, PRESENT AND PAST. 357 

lined for miles with great "bays" filled with timber, 
while the summer visitor is unlucky if he do not catch 
a glimpse of more than one of the huge rafts which are 
constantly bringing lumber down from tributary streams. 

A few miles from the city are the Heights of Abra- 
ham, the scene of Montcalm's defeat and Wolfe's victory, 
and the grave of both commanders. A modest column 
marks the spot where Wolfe fell, and another, placed in 
the governor's garden, commemorates the great French- 
man. It was a bold stroke, that expedition against 
Quebec which brought to a close, happy for England, 
but happier for America, the hundred years' war 
between the English and French in America. William 
Pitt had, indeed, resolved not merely to foil the ambition 
of Montcalm, but to destroy French rule in the New 
World altogether, so while Amherst, as we have seen, was 
driving the French from Lakes George and Champlain, 
Wolfe was sent out from England in command of eight 
thousand men, with the special object of reducing Quebec, 
then the strongest fortress in the world. 

Wolfe, although a hero and a genius, totally failed, at 
first, to draw Montcalm from his inaccessible fastness, and 
lay for six weary weeks inactive, sick, and almost despair- 
ing in his camp on the St. Lawrence opposite the citadel. 
At last, he discovered a steep and narrow path which led 
from the shore to the Heights of Abraham, a path which, 
indeed, demands good legs and lungs on the part of such 
peaceful tourists as now scale it unopposed. Sending 



358 CAiXADA, PRESENT AND PAST. 

Captain Cook (afterwards so famous as a navigator) to 
make a feigned attack elsewhere, Wolfe dropped down 
the river in boats, to the path in question. He was him- 
self the first to leap ashore and scale, by the help of crags 
and bushes, the steep trail where two men could not go 
abreast, and at daybreak on the 12th of September, 
1759, his whole force stood in orderly formation on 
the plateau. Had Montcalm, even then, remained in 
his fortress, all might have been well with him, but 
he chose to come out and fight the English in the 
open, and was defeated. " The fall of Montcalm and 
the submission of Canada put an end to the dream 
of a Frepch empire in America. In breaking through 
the line with which France had striven to check the 
Westward advance of the English colonists, Pitt had 
unconsciously changed the history of the world. His 
conquest of Canada, by removing the enemy whose 
dread knit the colonists to the mother country, and by 
throwing open to their energies, in the days to come, 
the boundless plains of the West, laid the foundations 
of the United States." ^" 

It was blowing furiously as the steamship Polynesian, 
leaving Quebec with passengers and mails on board, 
turned her head towards the Atlantic, to meet great, 
crested, sea-green waves marching in stately rows up the 
wide reaches of the St. Lawrence. But it became calm 
before evening fell and, again, I watched the play of 

* " A Short History of the English People " (Green). 



CANADA, PRESENT AND PAST. 359 

purples, golds and greys upon the undulations radiating 
from our steamer's bows, while a crescent moon hung 
above the blue-black silhouette of the Laurentide 
mountains. 

This range, probably the oldest in the world, divides 
the St. Lawrence from Hudson's Bay, and stretches from 
Lake Superior to the Atlantic. It stands about two 
hundred miles removed from, and runs parallel with the 
river, whose northern banks are formed by its magnifi- 
cent mountain shoulders, here covered with forest, there 
gashed by torrents or rough with crags. Only one 
large tributary, the weird Saguenay, pours its clear 
black-brown waters, through a profound gash in the 
Laurentides, into the green St. Lawrence, such other 
streams as flow from the northern watershed being for 
the most part cataracts. Nor is the right bank of the 
river deficient in grand mountain features, for the same 
Alleghanian folds which traverse the Eastern States, 
here hem the stream so closely that their tributaries 
are seldom more than twenty miles in length. Next 
to the ocean-like volume of the lower St. Lawrence, 
nothing surprises the traveller more than its compara- 
tively narrow valley. The crests of the ranges which 
bound it on either side are both visible from the deck 
of the steamer, and one asks, in momentary forgetful- 
ness of the five great lakes, and of Niagara's outpour — 
Whence all the wealth of waters hurrying through this 
trouG^h-like channel to the sea ? 



36o CANADA, PRESENT AND PAST. 

The banks of the St. Lawrence are bordered with 
many conspicuous terraces, which rise in successive 
levels, from the water's edge to heights of several 
hundred feet. These are the greater counterparts of 
the river-terraces of New England, which, in view of 
their practical importance no less than of their geological 
interest, deserve something more than a passing glance. 
The cultivable surfaces, whether of Canada or North- 
Eastern America, have certain notable features in com- 
mon. They are uniformly flat in the valleys, whose sides 
are as uniformly terraced, while great rocky masses here 
and there heave themselves like islands, so to speak, 
above the level sea of soil. But for this fertile garment, 
which only partially wraps the stony skeleton of Canada 
and New England, man could find no home in these 
countries, where he can but cling to the skirts, instead 
of making the bosom of mother-earth all his own. 
What and whence, then, is this hospitable table, spread 
as if by art itself, evenly over the hollows and shoulders 
of adamantine hills, themselves incapable of nourishing 
anything but the hardiest forests or feeding other than 
the wild forest creatures .'' 

Arable soil may have one of two origins. It may 
result from the slow decomposition of the rocky crust 
of the globe which moulders superficially into beds of 
earth under the influence of the oxygen, carbonic acid 
and moisture of the atmosphere ; or the rocks them- 
selves may be broken and ground to powder by the 



CANADA, PRESENT AND PAST. 361 

action of mechanical forces, their debris transported from 
the higher to the lower grounds and distributed in a 
variety of ways. In the former case, there will, of course, 
be a certain coincidence of the actual surface with that 
of the subjacent, but undecomposed rock, while both 
rock and soil will have the same chemical composition. 
The earthy covering of many countries, as, for example, 
the southern States of America, France, Italy and Spain, 
have been thus produced, but, not so, the soils of North- 
Eastern America. A glance at the northern bank of the 
St. Lawrence will demonstrate that there is no relation 
whatever between the contours of the Laurentides and 
the level terraces which they support, while the soils 
everywhere remain nearly uniform in character, although 
the rocks upon which they lie may be granitic here, 
slaty there, and calcareous elsewhere. Hence, we are 
obliged to conclude that the fruitful earth of these 
regions has resulted from the trituration of rocks foreign 
to the district in which they are found, and that the debris 
has been transported from its place of origin by some 
powerful mechanical agent. I say powerful because 
immense numbers of boulders, some of which are of 
enormous dimensions, requiring great force to remove 
them, have been carried away and are mixed with the 
finer detritus. 

Indications of such transport are found all over 
Eastern America which, from the Arctic circle down to 
latitude 40'^ N., is covered with stratified and unstratified 



362 CANADA, PRESExYT AND PAST. 

drift, consisting here of sand, there of clay, and else- 
where of boulder-trains. Wherever found, these de- 
posits evidence that the moving agent operated in a 
north and south direction, the material of which they 
are composed being always derived from rocks lying 
to the northward. 

There are only two natural agents capable of 
effecting displacements of this kind, viz. icebergs 
and glaciers. The former are enormous masses of ice 
which, breaking off from the ends of polar glaciers that 
descend to the sea, are floated by currents towards the 
equatorial regions of the globe. They carry immense 
quantities of rock and earth upon their surfaces, and 
when they melt distribute these at random over the 
ocean-bottom. Glaciers, on the other hand, are solid 
rivers of ice which descend the valleys of such 
mountains as are capped with perpetual snow and 
erode them in their passage. The hardest rocks are 
broken off and worn by the friction of the ice-river, 
which carries immense quantities of debris embedded 
in its bottom parts, as well as the detritus that falls 
upon its upper surface from rocks rising above the ice. 
Surfaces over which the glacier passes become smoothed, 
and even polished, by its friction, while they are worn 
into the mammillated forms known as " roches mou- 
tonnes," and at the same time grooved and scratched 
by the stones embedded in the moving ice. 

Has the arable soil, with its contained boulders, been 



CANADA, PRESENT AND PAST. 363 

transported from more northerly latitudes by icebergs 
or by glaciers ? The former is impossible, if only for the 
following reason. Drift is found at very great heights 
upon many mountains, as, for example, on Mount 
Washington, the dominating peak of the White Moun- 
tains, where it reaches an elevation of six thousand 
feet above sea-level. Now, if this drift were brought 
into its present position by icebergs, Canada must 
once have been covered by an ocean at least six thou- 
sand feet deep, or such a sea as would have extended 
from Hudson's Bay to Pennsylvania in the south, and 
to Winnipeg on the west. But among all the many 
remains of old terraces to be found at different levels all 
over the country in question, not one is more than five 
hundred feet above the sea, a fact which disposes of the 
idea that Canada was ever covered by an ocean deep 
enough to float icebergs over the summits of the White 
Mountains. 

There remain the glaciers, of whose existence and 
prodigious proportions the whole of North-Eastern 
America furnishes proofs. All the mountains, whether 
of Canada or New England, are true " roches moutonnes," 
and have their surfaces everywhere covered with grooves 
and scratches, which, for the most part, run from north 
to south. These glacial striae are found on the summits 
of some of the highest mountains, and even at heights of 
six thousand feet above the sea-level. There is, indeed, 
no escaping the conclusion that the whole of North- 



364 CANADA, PRESENT AND PAST. 

Eastern America was once covered with an ice-sheet of 
immense thickness, which moved slowly over the face of 
the country from the north towards the south. The 
ice was probably not less than eleven thousand feet 
thick on that part of the Laurentide Range which 
abuts upon the Atlantic, where precipitation was 
greatest. It thinned gradually on the watershed as 
this trended westward, but remained an immensely 
high and dominating crest of ice which, so to speak, 
deluged the whole country south of it, flowing in a sheet 
of constantly diminishing, but still vast thickness, to- 
wards that part of the Atlantic now called the Sound. 
The natural escape for the Canadian ice-sheet would 
appear to be the valley of the St. Lawrence, but not only 
was this outlet completely filled with ice, but it was 
precisely about its mouth that the glacier was highest, 
and this, consequently, sloped towards the continent 
instead of towards the Atlantic. 

The mechanical effect of this moving mass of ice upon 
the surface of North-Eastern America was immense. The 
glacier exercised a pressure of more than a thousand 
pounds per square inch ; it broke off, rubbed and rounded 
the superficial rocks, pushed its way along the valleys, 
carrying with it all such soils, the result of antecedent 
decomposition, as they contained, and transporting an 
incalculable mass of debris of all kinds. This was, for 
the most part, lodged, not on the surface of the ice- 
sheet, through which only the tops of the highest hills 



CANADA, PRESENT AND PAST. 365 

protruded, but in its lower parts, which were crowded 
with soil, stones and rubbish. As, century after century, 
this inconceivably powerful mechanical agent swept 
slowly over the surface of the country, meeting rocks 
of very various degrees of hardness in its passage, it 
dug more deeply into the soft, and less deeply into the 
hard portions of its bed, and so produced the countless 
lake-beds which characterize the glaciated district. The 
river valleys, especially those which ran north and south, 
were also greatly modified by the erosive action of the 
ice, and their beds \vere deepened, to an extent which 
would, in some cases, be quite inexplicable but for the 
hypothesis of the continental glacier. 

It is known that North America was covered with 
forests before the advent of the ice-sheet, and it there- 
fore becomes interesting to inquire into the cause of 
the great refrigeration of climate involved in the phe- 
nomenon of the glacial epoch. Many answers have been 
given to this question, answers which we have not time 
to recapitulate, and still less to sift, but, at least, there 
is no doubt that one of the most powerful of the causes 
in question was the greater elevation of northern North 
xAimerica in glacial times. The Laurentide Range rose 
to such heights that its summit became covered with 
perpetual snow. Glaciers began to form everywhere 
upon its flanks, and increased in volume, little by little, 
until they covered the greater part of British North 
America. Finally, these glaciers, becoming confluent. 



366 CANADA, PRESENT AND PAST. 

attained the prodigious thickness and spread to the 
immense distances already cited. 

But, after a time, the movement of elevation charac- 
terizing the glacial epoch was, first, checked, then arrested 
and, lastly, reversed. This was the commencement of the 
" Champlain period," or the beginning of the end of the 
Age of Ice. As the mountains gradually lost their great 
height, snow-falls were as gradually exchanged for rain- 
falls, the neve ceased to accumulate, and the foot of the 
continental ice-sheet began to retreat. The climate 
becoming milder at the same time, the ice melted faster 
as less of it remained, and drowned almost the whole 
country in immense floods of water. The lakes and 
rivers of the Champlain period became of prodigious 
magnitude, while the inundations in question were aggra- 
vated by the continued subsidence of the land. In the 
course of time. Lakes Erie, Ontario and Superior formed 
one vast internal sea ; the Mississippi basin was in the 
same condition and, as we have already seen, an immense 
arm of the sea covered the whole valley of the St. Law- 
rence and extended over Lake Champlain itself 

Meanwhile, as the ice retreated, its contained masses 
of earth and stones were deposited at random on the 
surface of the country, only to become submerged, either 
in the great inland seas of fresh water, or in arms of the 
ocean which' everywhere began to invade the country. 
Here they were sorted, rearranged, and deposited in beds 
of clay, sand, or of sand and boulders mixed, according 



CANADA, PRESENT AND PAST. 367 

as the water was still, running, or torrential. Thus the 
immense arable plains which line the banks of the St. 
Lawrence, were accumulated, and the same origin may 
be ascribed to all the rich river-bottoms of New England. 

As for the terraces of drift which mount, step by step, 
to heights of five hundred feet on the banks of the St. 
Lawrence, the highest of them, like their smaller repre- 
sentatives on New England streams, are but the remains 
of deposits of the Champlain age laid down at a time 
when the quantity of water escaping from the ice, to- 
gether with the subsidence of the land, were both at their 
maxima. Later on, a second upheaval of the continent 
took place. The ocean withdrew to its present level, 
the lakes emptied themselves of their surplus waters, 
and the rivers, digging, with more powerful streams than 
those of the present day, through the detritus which filled 
their valleys, scooped out their existing beds, leaving 
upon their banks the terraces which witness to their 
earlier and prodigious volume. Concluding this short 
sketch of the origin of arable soil in Canada and New 
England, we arrive at the present or " recent " period of 
the geologist, having reviewed a lapse of time which 
sober estimates measure by at least two hundred thousand 
years. Such was the character of Nature's preparations 
for the use and occupation of North America by man, 
whose way in the New World has been smoothed for 
him chiefly by ice. 

But, some reader may ask, is not this story a work 



368 CANADA, PRESENT AND PAST. 

of the imagination, a pure fancy, having no solid basis 
in fact ? Well, we are out upon the Atlantic now, the 
blue Laurentides, with their softly rounded contours and 
stair-like terraces, are left far behind, and already, we 
have passed the snow-crowned coasts of Labrador, 
Anticosti and Newfoundland. Although it is mid-July, 
a cold sea is under our keel, a biting wind nips us on 
deck, and night after night, we shiver while we watch 
and wonder at the arch of pale aurora crowning the 
northern sky. Yet we are scarcely north of the latitude 
of London, and only a few degrees south of us, the 
Adriatic, as we learn later, is enduring tropical heat 
while measuring steps with us on the voyage from 
New York to Liverpool. Meanwhile, certain conclusive 
answers to the question I have put in the reader's mouth 
come upon us unawares. It was on July lOth, in lat. 
50"" 41' N., and long. 58" 2' W., that the Polynesian 
fell in with a train of magnificent icebergs, floating 
majestically with the polar current right athwart our 
course. The day was cloudless, the sea calm, and for 
more than eight hours wc continued to review the fleet 
of the ice-king, passing southward to its certain destruc- 
tion in the warm waters of the Gulf- Stream. Of the 
unspeakable beauty which these bergs displayed, of their 
fantastic pinnacles, awful precipices, and massive bases, 
as of their heavenly azures and opals, I am not concerned 
to speak, and could, certainly, make no adequate picture. 
But, at least, I can report that many of these floating 



CAiYADA, PRESENT AND PAST. 369 

masses of ice towered more than two hundred feet above 
the water while the total height of some bergs was 
probably not far short of two thousand feet. Yet they 
were only the wasted children of Greenland's ice-cliffs, 
themselves a remnant of the old continental glacier, 
which still caps that country with a sheet of ice several 
thousand feet in thickness. Pall-like as that covering 
is, it conceals no dead continent, but swathes in its 
white folds, as with a mysterious, chrysalid robe, another 
America, which Nature is preparing for the use of future 
man. 



THE END. 



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General Literature. . 2 Military Works. . . 31 

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ADAMSON, H. T., B.D.—Th.e Truth as it is in Jesus. Crown 
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The Vicar of Wakefield. With Preface and Notes by Austin 

DOBSON. 

English Comic Dramatists. Edited by Oswald Crawfurd. 
English Lyrics. 

The Sonnets of John Milton. Edited by Mark Tattison. 
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The Christian Year. Thoughts in Verse for the Sundays and 
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or, Chaucer Tales re-told to Children. With 6 Illustrations fron 
the EUesmere MS. Third Edition. Fcap. Svo, 3jr. dd. 

STRETTON, Hesl>a.—T>a.vid Lloyd's Last "Will. With 4 Illustra^ 
tions. New Edition. Royal i6mo, 2s. 6d. 

Tales from Ariosto Re-told for Children. By a Lady. With 3 

Illustrations. Crown Svo, 4s. 6d. 
WHITAKER, Florence.— C\ivis\,Y''s Inheritance. A London Story,' 
Illustrated. Royal l6mo, is. 6d. 



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